HANDS ON SKILLS GENERAL AWARENESS NETWORK

HANDS ON SKILLS GENERAL AWARENESS NETWORK
According to the United Nations statistics, there are 1.2 billion youth aged 15-24 globally as of 2015, accounting for one out of every six people (17%) worldwide. This is predicted to increase to one out of every four people, which means there would be 1.3 billion youth by 2030. This global trend has particular pertinence to Africa, because Africa has the largest concentration of young people in the world. According to the United Nations, 226 million youth aged 15-24 lived in Africa in 2015 representing nearly 20% of Africa’s population, making up one fifth of the world’s youth population.
While many young people have responded to the sluggish labor market prospects by continuing tertiary education and investing in their human capital, others have altogether withdrawn from education, training and employment. The share of youths aged 18 to 24 was neither in employment nor education (NEET) in 2011 ranged from 4 percent (the Netherlands) to up to 20 percent (Italy and Greece) in Europe, 12 percent in Australia and New Zealand, and 15 percent in the US (OECD, 2012). Existing evidence from developing countries suggests that rates are even higher with an average of 20 percent of youths in Latin America (ILO, 2010) and 25 percent in African countries (UNECA 2012).
Unemployment rates among youths have soared since the Great Recession of 2008, doubling the adult unemployment rate in many developed and developing countries. Youths account for 60% of all of Africa’s jobless, according to the World Bank. In North Africa, the youth unemployment rate was 29.3 per cent in 2016 and greater in Botswana, the Republic of the Congo, Senegal, and South Africa, (UNDP 2012). In sub-Saharan Africa, Young people between 15 and 25 represent more than 60% of Africa's total population and unemployment constitutes 10.9% youth in the region which is a major cause for concern. The unemployment rate in the East Africa was 80 percent and keeps getting worse due to insufficient employable skills and enhanced general awareness within the interventions that would be able to create them sustainable employment opportunities.
Uganda Bureau of Statistics 2012 revealed that the share of unemployed youth (national definition, 18-30 years) among the total unemployed persons in the country was 64 percent. Given the rapid growth of the Ugandan population three-quarters of the population are below the age of 30 years coupled with the fact that the youth are getting better educated through higher access to primary and secondary education, a stronger focus on job creation for this age group was not devised and emphasized.
Despite the progress made by African governments to skill the youths through Technical Vocational Education Training (TVET), provisions are still fraught with challenges. In most African countries, Uganda inclusive, there is an inherent bias in form of low prestige towards technical and vocational courses which is generally brought by negative attitude and perception towards the sector. Most youth are oriented to prefer academically based professions to TVET skill-based professions and the youth labor force participation rate is very low in Sub-Saharan. The enrolment rates in secondary and tertiary education is the lowest among all regions and those who enroll for TVET after finishing secondary level was 5 percent or less (UNESCO 2010). Other researchers found out that vocational education and training (VET) was frequently perceived as the solution to improve the opportunities of youths who lack the resources, skills and motivation to continue with higher education but it has also gained little response due to its limited awareness among the masses. In spite of all the attempts by different development agencies in creating vocational training centers, there is still a gap of awareness among the communities, it’s considered as the second option as mentioned already above.
This project “Hands on skills General Awareness Network” will bring together partner organizations to make sure that the development of hands on skills is spread to partner countries and create tools through which awareness dissemination is carried out. It will also sensitize communities the relevancy of acquiring vocational skills to reduce high demand for matching with the employers demands. We will emphasize vocational skills training benefits and bridge the gap between existing skills and current job mismatch which will eventually prevent all worlds challenges like volubility, dependency, rampant outbreak of diseases like HIV/AIDS, human trafficking mainly caused by poverty.
The project will also address the questions of poor attitude, perceptions, myths and norms attached to vocational training education among the target groups.
Project activities;
o Kick of meeting
o Dissemination of the project.
o Youth exchange to discuss issues affecting them in their attempts to take vocational education as their major career trend (any of the participating partner country can host this a period of 1 week)
o Establishing learning vocational skills training hubs. Here each participating partner will have a hub for the communities to come access information.
o Youth workers 1-week workshop to devise means for hub formation and bringing together all that is required for a rich hub i.e. best practices required for the technical vocational skills success in partner countries.
o End of project conference where different panelists will be invited to discuss issues concerning hands on skills development.
Projects goal.
To create awareness, increase knowledge and competences to the target communities on hands-on skills as a tool to development.
Project Objectives:
o To create awareness for considering hands-on skills as the best approach of education to development both at individual and government levels.
o Reducing levels of dependence among the youth.
o Creating confident, stable, able and self-reliant future citizens who will be able to adopt to the cause.
o To create increased esteem of hands-on skills among the target groups in the partner organization countries.

NB. We are looking for any EU Organization or a university that can apply and coordinate the project