The USAID and YouLead, a youth employment and business start up program in partnership with the Ministry of Skills Development and Vocational Training targets around 40,000 youth to be trained in the next four years under a program to make youth employable through skills development.
YouLead recognizes that the construction and tourism sectors alone need around 700,000 skilled workers with 400,000 and 300,000 workers respectively. However, what is alarming is that according to estimates, around 70 percent of the youth are out of employment and of that nearly 80 percent come from the rural sector.
A YouLead official said that there is a clear need to train youth and develop their skills to meet the needs of the job market and make them employable. Skills mismatch is another major issue in Sri Lanka which we need to urgently look into in order to enable youth to secure employment. USAID, the US Agency for international Development in funding YouLead aims at helping Sri Lanka to create a competent workforce, a major challenge that has gripped the country for several decades.
“Clearly there is a mismatch of skills in the marketplace. YouLead will address this mismatch in a systematic way,” YouLead Project Director Charles Conconi said during the launch of YouLead at the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce last week. However, employers are unable to find workers. YouLead, a US$ 12 million initiative will link youth to productive careers in the economy and enable Sri Lanka to create market oriented, skilled and flexible workforce.
“We work with careers counselors, training institutes and instructors to build a foundation for youth to develop their careers. Conconi said. US Ambassador to Sri Lanka and the Maldives Atul Keshap said USAID and its partners will collaborate over a four year period to support youth in the age of 16-35 in Sri Lanka to be more competitive in the labour market. Estimates reveal that around 1.5 billion youth across the globe are unemployed and as a result there is growing frustration as they are unable to raise a family and lead a normal life.
The YouLead program aims at creating opportunities for self employment by developing skills of young entrepreneurs and encouraging financial institutions to led youth led start ups. The program also intends engaging more women in the workforce. The first Sri Lankan to summit Mount Everest and Youth Ambassador- ‘Reach Up’ , Jayanthi Kuru-Utumpala wrapping up the proceeding stressed the need to create an enabling environment for you to achieve their dreams.
“Gender based discrimination and violence in work place must come to an end if we are to create an enabling environment. Women working late must be provided transport to get back safely, flexible working hours to encourage women must be offered for women to stay in jobs and archaic gender rights must be done away with,” she said.