World Youth Skills Day has been chosen in order to promote youth employment opportunities worldwide and to highlight their skills that help build a strong community. The United Nations has focused on dedicating this day to building gender equality in employment opportunities.
The term ‘youth’ is related to the strength and vigour in everyone’s mind, but in the current reality, it is difficult for young people to enjoy this stage due to the obstacles that block their path, the numerous responsibilities on their shoulders, and the difficult requirements that the future has placed in order to allow them to enter it.
“The youth of today are the leaders of tomorrow.”
-Nelson Mandela [1]
When we seek to improve society, we take all its groups into account and assess their needs, in order to have a good understanding of the problems they suffer from.
Young people worldwide suffer from numerous social problems that hinder their prosperity and reaching their fullest potential. Therefore, the United Nations General Assembly has been celebrating every year World Youth Skills Day on July 15, in order to express the importance of this day that relates to youth, their capabilities and their key role in progressing and developing societies. [2]
Since 2015, we have been celebrating this day to remind societies of the importance of preparing young people for the labour market and equipping them with employment and entrepreneurship skills by helping them enter the new world for them. It is our duty to ensure for them a flexible transition between school and work, and help them discover new capabilities through practical exercise so that they will be the ones who hold the hand of the following generation of young people in this transitional process.
Also read: World Refugee Day.
In this accelerating age, time is passing at a different speed for the young generation. So imagine with me, you are a fresh graduate searching for a job, then you will be shocked by the reality that most of the available opportunities require you to have years of practical experience. How do you get experience? Through the job that requires you to have years of experience to get it.
This is the vicious circle that young people encountered and are still encountering when they enter the labour market, so they feel that the world has closed its doors.
Young people face – three times more than their elders – the possibility of unemployment and disparity in opportunities in the labour market, and the offered jobs that are not up to their aspirations [3], it is estimated that youth employment declined globally by 8.7% in 2020 compared to 3.7% for adults. [4]
As for the Syrian youth, who has not recovered yet from the numerous effects of the war, they find themselves in front of jobs that are less than their ambitions and capabilities, with low wages which match neither the exerted efforts nor the living conditions in their country. So, they migrate searching for more opportunities abroad, and their countries lose indispensable experiences and skills.
Unemployment, depression, low income, and the gap between the acquired theoretical experiences and the required practical experiences; are all those obstacles that stand in the way of the youth and prevent them from reaching the future they dream of, and many others.
Therefore, it has been essential to have the World Youth Skills Day in order to celebrate all young people who face many obstacles in securing their employment opportunities.
Women in this world suffer in many aspects; the labour market was not an exception to them. Despite the efforts exerted to achieve justice for women in this society, the statistics indicate that the participation of women in the global workforce stood at 48.5% in 2018, 26.5% below that of their male counterparts. In addition, the global unemployment rate for women in 2018 increased by about 0.8% higher than that for men. Altogether, for every 10 men in a job, only six women are employed. [5]
In front of these figures, I leave you to imagine the length of the journey and the hardship that the fresh female graduates still face in order to find their place in the labour market. In addition to other phenomena, such as harassment in the workplace, the difficulty of finding a balance between work and home, society’s view of the working mother as a neglectful mother, and many other problems that women face.
The solutions to these problems are available in our hands, and they only require awareness of them and their importance. Let us start with raising the employers’ awareness to realise the necessity of employing young people, educating them and giving them the practical experience they need, as the future is in their hands. Just imagining for a moment that our future is falling into inexperienced hands, we will feel that our future is threatened.
In addition to technical and, vocational education and training can equip youth with the skills required to access the world of work. [4]
We must take into account the necessity of developing the educational system and content to suit the requirements of this age and keep pace with the rapid changes.
In addition to the importance of volunteer work during the academic years, the youth can acquire some practical experiences in all aspects; such as leadership, Time Management, cooperation and teamwork, in addition to helping the local community.
We can implement community projects and initiatives based on the potential of youth, to employ this potential towards building society, and we can hold conferences, scientific seminars and workshops to prepare young people for the future ahead of them.
Finally, in this world, we were brought up with the idea that the future will be for the following generation, and we must strive as hard as we can to leave this world better for them. But, when I live in this society, I wonder if those before me really did their best to leave me in this world? Is this the world after their attempts to leave it better for me and my generation, as we are the youth of this age?
We, at the Uplifting Syrian Women initiative, strive to assist young people to develop their skills, equip them with the required practical experience, and help them overcome the obstacles that the present has put in their way, to reach the future they deserve.
♀️ Uplifting Syrian Women Initiative aims at sustainable peace building in Syria through targeting women and providing them with free online courses, workshops, discussion sessions and trainings, with a view to achieving the goals of Gender Equality, Quality Education and Decent Work and Economic Growth, which all fall into the interest of society as a whole and serve the purpose of rebuilding it.
References:
[1] Quote Fancy
[2] E3arabi