1. Trade Union Training on Youth Employment for Leaders of Youth Committees in Asia and the Pacific region Bangkok May 13, 2004 Sara Spant Associate Expert on Employment Promotion ILO Subregional Office for East Asia

2. Policies and Strategies for Youth Employment Employability

3. Employability What is Employability?

4. Core skills or key competencies Employability now requires a new set of skills without which labour market strategies will fail in a rapidly changing workplace. Examples of such survival skills are: Communicating ideas and information Collecting, organising, and analysing ideas and information Working with others in teams Language, literacy, and numeracy Managing contingencies – decision making Using technology – particularly ICT

5. General actions for Enhancing Employability Governments in Asia should continue to strengthen their commitments to universal education from primary school to secondary education. Broad-based schooling and interdisciplinary studies can make it easier for young people to change occupations and upgrade skills during their working life. Substantial improvement can be made in teaching methods that are often based on rote learning. Active learning and problem solving can help the students put their newly acquired knowledge into practice.

6. General actions for enhancing employability Action must be taken to reach more disadvantaged subgroups of youth. These include girls and young women, migrants, refugees, displaced persons, street children, indigenous youth minorities, young people in rural areas and young people with disabilities. Policies should be defined to ensure a healthy youth workforce especially given the high HIV-infection rates and the increasing drug use among young people.

7. Key actions for enhancing employability Training programmes need to be adaptable and targeted. Schools and universities should be in close contact with employers in order to respond to their needs. This process may be facilitated through institutions providing employment services. Enterprises can also be more closely involved in the work of vocational schools and universities in terms of research that leads to improvements in curricula. An integrated education-to-work programme can be developed to support school leavers who are entering the labour force.

8. Ensure that girls and boys are able to obtain quality education that lays the foundation for employability and that fosters the development of attitudes and values needed to succeed in life.  Expanding access for all children to basic education.  Improving the quality of basic education, including participation and successful completion rates. Key actions for enhancing employability

9.  Adopting programmes to encourage young people to remain in school, at least until basic literacy and numeracy have been achieved, and provide opportunities for early school-leavers, including adolescent mothers, to continue their education.  Developing learning opportunities for young adults with little or no schooling to obtain basic numeracy and literacy together with life and livelihood skills.  Providing incentives and support to poor families to ensure that child workers are taken out of the workplace, rehabilitated and provided with the opportunity to attend school.

10. Improve the accessibility, relevance and effectiveness of secondary and higher education and technical and vocational training so that both young women and men can make the most of their opportunities on the labour market and cope with fast changes.  Promoting and providing access to vocational training as a fundamental right.  Promoting equal access to technical and vocational training and higher education by providing gender- sensitive guidance and by encouraging girls and young women to enter into male-dominated fields of study and work.

11. Facilitate school-to-work transition Improve labour market transition services, including school-to-work transition services by:   Improving quality, availability and accessibility of labour market information (LMI);   Improving relevance and availability of gender-sensitive career guidance and counseling services;   Expanding availability of employment information through public and private employment services, job banks, job fairs, trade union databases, etc.;   Make labour market services readily available through specialized youth employment “ one stop shops ” and mobile facilities;   Provide mentoring, internships and other work experience opportunities for youth entering the labour market and on-the-job follow up programmes for those already at work;   Providing realistic information and support facilities for youth seeking to migrate (within the country or across borders).

12. Meeting labour market needs Promote involvement of employers ’ and workers ’ organizations to better link education and training to labour market needs:  In determining the curricula of courses more closely suited to realities of labour market;  In offering placements and sponsorships;  In promotional/information activities within schools;  In actively participating in the formulation and implementation of active labour market policies;  In ensuring provision of training at enterprise level and guaranteeing quality of training.