World Youth Skills Day 2020 has been commemorated under the theme “Skills for a Resilient Youth”. The day is celebrated on July 15th every year to acknowledge and celebrate the importance of equipping young people with skills for employment, decent work and entrepreneurship.
According to the Central Regional Director of the National Youth Authority, Mr Emmanuel S. Martey, the day in Ghana echoes the mandate of the National Youth Authority.
According to him, notwithstanding limited funds and resources, the Central Region has embarked on programs geared towards youth skill development.
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“For us as a region, it has become one of our core area that we want to embark on as far as our youth empowerment program is concerned. We have already begun training some of the youth with various skills. These include soap making, hand sanitizer, biogas making and shampoo making. We have also tasked all the districts in the region to carry out one skill training of their choice looking at what specifically will be beneficiary to the youth in the area.”
According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the closure of schools across nations as a result of the Covid19 pandemic, has impacted over 60% of the world’s student population including those in Technical and Vocational Education Training (TVET).
Relatedly, Mr. Martey revealed that the National Youth Authority has been equally affected by the pandemic as they are forced to reduce the number of youths they recruit for training.
“Normally we have a target of training about 60 to 100 people at a time but some of the places we used for the training purposes are not spacious enough and we don’t want to endanger the lives of the youth at the expense of their skill training so we have decided to reduce the target to a reasonable number of 25.”
