Providing the right skills at the right time
Moderadores
Ms Maria Concepcion E. Sardaña is currently the Chief Technical Advisor of the ILO-SIDA Project on “Upscaling Skills for Trade and Economic Diversification (STED)” in Cambodia and Myanmar. STED provides guidance for the integration of skills development in sectors that have the potential to increase exports and contribute to economic diversification. In Cambodia, national stakeholders selected light manufacturing and food processing as priority sectors for STED. Meanwhile, in Myanmar the STED work focuses on tourism and the vegetables and fruits sector. Prior to her work on STED, Cocoy was the Senior Programme Officer of the ILO Country Office for the Philippines. Her portfolio included programming, resource mobilization and coordination of the ILO’s Decent Work Country Programme for the Philippines. She was responsible for project development and technical backstopping of ILO projects including those on employment policy, youth employment, local economic development, skills development, climate change adaptation and green jobs, social protection, working conditions, migration, and child labour. Cocoy joined the ILO in 2002 as National Programme Manager of the International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC) and thereafter as Senior Programme Officer of the IPEC – Time-Bound Project team. Before her assignments with ILO, Cocoy was Deputy Executive Director of the Institute for Labor Studies, the research arm of the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) in the Philippines. Cocoy holds a Master’s Degree in Policy Science from the Graduate School of Policy Science (now the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies or GRIPS) in Japan. She obtained her Bachelor of Science in Business Economics (cum laude) from the University of the Philippines.
Bolormaa Tumurchudur Klok is a Technical Officer at Skills and Employability Branch of the Employment Policy Department of the International Labour Office (ILO). She joined the ILO in 2012 as an Economic/Technical Officer of a technical cooperation project on 'Skills for Trade and Economic Diversification (STED)' that comprised substantial country and sectoral‐level research and capacity‐building activities concerning the nexus between skills, trade and employment in export potential sectors of developing countries. Prior to the ILO, she was an Economic Affairs Officer at the Trade Analysis Branch of the UNCTAD. Bolormaa has a PhD in Economics from University of Lausanne (HEC) and has consulted for the World Bank and the World Trade Organization (WTO).
Cornelius Gregg is a Technical Specialist with the ILO Skills and Employability Branch (SKILLS) in Geneva, Switzerland. He holds Bachelor of Engineering and Master of Business Administration degrees from University College Dublin. Con worked as a consultant in skills policy for many years. He joined the ILO in 2010 to act as Lead Researcher on an EC-ILO project on Skills for the Low Carbon Economy at the Skills and Employability Branch. In 2011, Con joined a collaboration with the ILO’s Trade and Employment Programme to develop and pilot the Skills for Trade and Economic Diversification (STED) methodology. STED is a sector-based approach to anticipating and delivering upon skills needs that targets sectors with potential to grow decent employment through more effective participation in international trade. Since 2013, Con has led work at the Skills and Employability Branch on developing STED, and on delivering the STED-based technical cooperation that has supported ten countries to date in Asia, Africa and Europe, with more in the pipeline. Sectors covered include agri-food, tourism and pharmaceuticals among others. He has conducted significant numbers advisory missions to developing countries with a view to improving the responsiveness of skills development systems to the current and future needs of their tradable sectors.
Naomy Lintini is a private sector and value chain specialist with a passion for supporting enterprises to secure sustainable business solutions. She has been involved in managing enterprise, value chain, skills development, projects for over 20 years. Naomy holds a Master’s Degree in Business Administration. Her professional experience includes designing and managing programmes that foster sustainable enterprise development, entrepreneurship, skills for economic diversification and providing policy advice to regional bodies, national governments and development organisations. She has been actively involved in supporting private sector firms to implement pro-poor business models. As a master trainer, business coach and mentor, Naomy’s ambition is to promote the competitiveness and sustainability of small and medium enterprises by among other things, facilitating their integration into mainstream value chains and market systems. She is currently based in Lilongwe, Malawi, where she works as Chief Technical Advisor to ILO supported projects promoting skills enhancement for trade competitiveness and economic diversification and capacity building for sustainable enterprise development.
This E-Discussion will allow experts, practitioners and representatives from a range of institutions and enterprises in different parts of the world to come together virtually to raise questions, share experiences, and address challenges on sectoral approaches to skills development. Click on the above list of names for discussion moderators, including their biographies.
Helping enterprises find workers with the right skills, and ensuring that workers acquire the skills they need to find productive employment is a key to economic prosperity and building inclusive societies. Adopting a forward-looking perspective to skills development to improve the competiveness of specific industries or sectors contributes to a country’s growth, economic diversification and to the creation of decent jobs.
The Global KSP will focus this E-Discussion on ‘Providing the right skills at the right time: The role of sectoral skills development in contributing to productive and competitive economies’. Over the next two weeks, the E-Discussion will take place in two parts. During the first week, the Global KSP will look at the current skills challenges facing industry and the labour market. During the second week, the dialogue will invite participants to share their experiences and good practices on anticipating future skills needs in specific sectors of the economy.
Week two questions: Initiatives and what works:
-Sectoral skills development approaches have proven useful in engaging employers, albeit they take different forms within different national contexts. What models of employer engagement have you identified as being effective when examining approaches to sectoral skills development?
-What role can tripartite sectoral skills councils play in anticipating the needs of a sector for current and future skills training, assessing the quality and relevance of training programmes and improving relevance?
-What are some effective examples of forward-looking strategies for developing skills in a particular sector that will improve the performance of enterprises and keep the skills of workers up-to-date?
-To what extent are countries considering the specific needs of their key sectors when developing national level skills development policies/TVET strategies?