The 15th July ‘World Youth Skills Day’ highlights the opportunities and obstacles facing young people in jobs. Increasing youth unemployment is one of today’s world’s most important challenges facing economies and communities, for developed and developing countries alike. On 18th December 2014, the United Nations (UN) General Assembly adopted by consensus, a resolution, spearheaded by Sri Lanka, declaring 15th July as the “World Youth Skills Day”. This day is an opportunity for young people, institutions of technical and vocational education and training (TVET), and stakeholders from the public and private sectors to recognize and celebrate the importance of equipping young people with job skills, decent work, and entrepreneurship. Respondents to a survey of TVET institutions, jointly collected by UNESCO, the International Labor Organization (ILO) and therefore the United Nations agency, reported that distance training became the foremost common way of imparting skills, with considerable difficulties regarding, among others, curricula adaptation, trainee and trainer preparedness, connectivity, or assessment and certification processes.
The UN (United Nations) designated day seeks to get a greater awareness of and discussion on the importance of technical, education, and training and also the development of other skills relevant to both local and global economies. It’s hoped that it’ll contribute to reducing unemployment and underemployment among the youth across the world. It’ll highlight youth skills development to draw attention to the critical need for marketable skills. Acquiring technical and vocational skills for jobs, decent work, and entrepreneurship; reducing gender inequality and providing disadvantaged access. Youth make up a fifth of the world’s labor force. But 400 million young people are currently missing employment opportunities, while 270 million young people are out of work. Training is moving from a pre-employment practice to a work-integrated lifelong cycle. World Skills will support this globally important topic through the wide range of activities and initiatives in our six focus areas all aimed at raising the profile and recognition of skilled people and showing how important skills are in achieving economic growth and personal achievement. Inspiring, educating, and developing youth is an integral part of this. The aim is to achieve better socio-economic conditions for the youth of today, including as a way to tackle the challenges of unemployment and under-employment. TVET can equip youth with the talents required to access the globe of labor, including skills for self-employment. It can even improve responsiveness to changing skill-demands by companies and communities, increase productivity, and increase wage levels.
