Enhancing development & growth in the sector - Regional Conference (Central, East and Southern Africa)
English
Governments
Governments hold a wealth of knowledge on skills development, and are increasingly realizing the value of learning from each others’ experiences. Their policy documents, programme evaluations, and research findings contain their experience and ideas on how to better link skills to employment
International organizations
Information is gathered from other international organizations that promote skills development and the transition from education and training to work. The Interagency Group on Technical and Vocational Education and Training (IAG-TVET) was established in 2009 to share research findings, coordinate joint research endeavours, and improve collaboration among organizations working at the international and national levels.
Career guidance and employment services
Career guidance and counselling, career education and lifelong development of skills for employability are key for success in learning activities, effective career transitions, livelihood planning, entrepreneurship and in increasing labour market participation. They are instrumental in promoting skills utilization, recognition (RPL), as well as in improving enterprise human resource management.
Career development activities encompass a wide variety of support activities including career information and advice, counselling, work exposure (e.g. job shadowing, work experience periods), assessment, coaching, mentoring, professional networking, advocacy, basic and employability skills training (curricular and non-curricular) and entrepreneurship training. It is often an area which is fragmented across different ministries (e.g. education, TVET, employment, youth) requiring an effort to achieve the necessary coordination to provide adequate support to individuals during learning, employment and unemployment/inactivity periods.
Youth employability
Globally, nearly 68 million young women and men are looking for and available for work, and an estimated 123 million young people are working but living in poverty. The number who are not in employment, education or training (NEET) stands at 267 million, a majority of whom are young women. Significantly, young people are three times as likely as adults (25 years and older) to be unemployed.
Skills development is a primary means of enabling young people to make a smooth transition to work. A comprehensive approach is required to integrate young women and men in the labour market, including relevant and quality skills training, labour market information, career guidance and employment services, recognition of prior learning, incorporating entrepreneurship with training and effective skills forecasting. Improved basic education and core work skills are particularly important to enable youth to engage in lifelong learning as well as transition to the labour market.
Within the Inter-Agency Career Guidance Working Group (IAG CGWG)’s Global Career Month, UNESCO RO will conduct the regional workshop on “Career Guidance and Counselling“on November 24 in Nairobi to discuss development, use and promotion of career guidance and counseling in African countries.
The Career Guidance Framework will be presented at the workshop as a good practice. It was developed under BEAR II project. The Better Education for Africa’s Rise II project (BEAR II) is UNESCO’s initiative with financial support from the Republic of Korea (RoK), targeting five countries of Eastern Africa (Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, Tanzania and Uganda).
The objectives of the conference are:
- To raise awareness about the role and importance of effective career guidance to enable access to decent work, careers and support growth efforts during economic recovery, based on the example of BEAR II project; To share goods practices and lessons learned on career guidance within the BEAR II countries
- To share the Regional career Guidance and counselling Framework, and identify shared challenges to the development of career guidance systems as well local specificities linked to local contexts;
- To discuss Career Guidance framework, recommendations and implementation plans
Zoom Link:
Join Zoom Meeting
https://unesco-org.zoom.us/j/83496802320
Meeting ID: 834 9680 2320
Passcode: 908463
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Career guidance
