Equip Youth Global Meeting Scaling Successes, Charting Futures August 27-29// Johannesburg, South Africa

The International Youth Foundation is hosting the Scaling Successes, Charting Futures EquipYouth Global Meeting, on August 27-28, 2014, in Johannesburg, South Africa. The event, supported by the Caterpillar Foundation, brought together representatives from EquipYouth implementer partners, the public, private and NGO communities from South Africa to celebrate what has been accomplished and plan next steps for how to further expand job and career opportunities for today’s youth. This event provided a forum for participants to share best practices in leveraging public-private partnerships, promote innovations in curriculum and training delivery, and develop effective job placement strategies towards achieving impact, scale and sustainability across youth employment programs.

Countries around the world are facing challenges related to unemployment, underemployment, or lack of participation in the labor market, especially among youth. Certain sectors, however, are well positioned to contribute to youth development and help meet the jobs challenge, thus fostering economic development within the communities and nations in which they operate. The industrial and mechanical sector, with its global reach and key role in these industries, has much to contribute to the economic viability of today’s youth

The public and private sectors can support and connect with young people who are seeking economic achievement—both as potential employees and as suppliers or vendors in a supply chain. By building multi-sector partnerships and collaborations, we can drive the scale, impact and sustainability of programs that enhance young people’s access to decent jobs. This is the strength of IBL, EquipYouth program team encouraged industries to contribute through its role in providing direct technical skills training in schools and/or provide module and assessment of technical competence of the trainees, and/or provides their contribution by engaged in the workshops for preparing recruitment test industry. To build the partnership with the companies, EquipYouth coordinate 4 times HRD workshop in Karawang. This collaboration is a key success of Job Placement in Indonesia, which is achieved 200% of the target number of participants in Job placement. IBL trained 911 youth (450 targeted) with life skill training, 577 youth (300 targeted) with technical skill training, 555 youth (targeted 225) placed in decent jobs. We got opportunities to share quantitative and qualitative achievements in supporting youth with job placement globally and also share lessons learned in the job placement process along with recommendations for the future.

In one interactive panel, India, Rusia and Singapore demonstrate how they use innovative tools such as gamification, e-learning curricula and 3D technology to improve the impact of their respective programs. India build a Career Quest game, which make youth understand the career path and how to achieve their goal. Rusia develops a portal which gives job opportunities information open to public. Singapore using a creative plastics gun to rise up the creativity and entrepreneurship.

While the numbers of women in STEM (science, technology, Enginering and Math) careers globally are low, companies and governments are realizing that a way to catalyze growth, tackle unemployment and development is through the education and training of girls in STEM. It takes a concerted effort however, including policy changes within government, corporate commitments and a strong civil society to create the intended affects. Drawing on examples from Unilever’s engineering program and Women in Engineering, the third days highlight the policy and institutional changes that the industry should consider to increase low-income, female participation in the STEM field. Some countries inculed Indonesia who will run the phase II, having more disccussion on it.

As the current EquipYouth is ending in coming December 2014, the Phase II of EquipYouth program will coming soon in early 2015, which targeting 1500 dis-advanted young women and man in Bekasi, Cikarang, Karawang and Batam.