kathmadu.Two days ‘National Youth Skills Summit’, organized virtually by Youth Advocacy Nepal (YAN) in collaboration with UNESCO, National Youth Council, Restless Development Nepal, Raleigh International Nepal and Global Peace Foundation on 15 and 16 July, has been completed.
Addressing the summit, Madhav Prasad Dhungel, vice president of National Youth Council and also the chief guest speaker of the summit, said that training and entrepreneurship should be interlinked; otherwise, training would be fruitless.
Similarly at Summit, Baikuntha Prasad Aryal- Director General at Center for Education and Development said that although enacted a lot by government of Nepal, policies and programs related to TVET have not been implemented as expected. Except other reasons, information dissemination to target groups properly has been predominately a challenge to execute the TVET policy enacted by the government of Nepal in 2012, told Aryal. In a different context, Aryal opined that around 3 million people internally and 1 million from returnee migrants have been added into the unemployment list due to effect of COVID-19.
At summit, Dr. Mukunda Khanal, a representative from UNDP Skill Project, said that educational system should link and facilitate between education and work, making conducive environment. In addition, Khanal added that the skills learned by young people in the informal sectors should be formalized and recognized.
Presenting the paper on lifelong learning for youth at summit, Bimal Kumar Phnuyal- Member at Nepal National Commission for UNESCO said that young people should be lifelong learners for transformative actions in the society. Meanwhile, according to UNICEF, UNESCO and WHO, there should ten core life skills for lifelong learning as self-awareness, critical thinking, creative thinking, problem solving, effective communication, and interpersonal relationship, empathy, coping with stress and, coping with emotion, told Phnuyal.
Sharing that UN General Assembly in 2014 adopted the global strategy to equip the young people with skills, Dr. Balaram Timalsina- Education Department head at UNESCO office in Kathmandu, said that the strategy insisted to equip young people with set of skills for decent work, employment and entrepreneurship. Additionally, Timalsina opined, as per the document, that decent work is determined with four components: feeling of young people, feeling of family, future career and adequate fiancé in relation to jobs.
Giving vote of thanks to all, Naren Khatiwada, president of Youth Advocacy Nepal (YAN) said that the budget allocated for the technical and vocational skills should be increased.
During the two days program, stressing the relevancy of skills for employment and entrepreneurship in Nepal, participants, more than 150 from across Nepal, shared their experience, knowledge and perspectives in representative way with respect to skills in Nepal.
