World Youth Skills Day 2022 : Theme, History And Initiatives Of India For Youth Skilling

On July 15, every year the World Youth Skill Day is celebrated around the world. The day was an initiative of the United Nations, with an aim to celebrate the strategic importance of equipping youths with multiple sets of skills for employment, decent work and entrepreneurship opportunities.

The World Youth Skills Day is also celebrated to promote the elimination of gender inequality by ensuring the access of resources to the vulnerable section of society. In this article you will get to know the history, 2022 theme and a lot about world youth skill day.

World Youth Skills Day 2022 Theme

Theme of year 2022 is: "Learning and skills for life, work, and sustainable development".

The day is marked to emphasise on the need of continuous learning of new skills to stand special in a crowd of competitors in this era of Global competition. The theme itself suggests that it is important to equip yourself with essential skills for employment, entrepreneurship and work.

History Of World Youth Skills Day

The World Youth Skills day was first declared by the United Nations General Assembly in 2014. Since then the day has been utilised as a unique opportunity for dialogue between young people, institutions, firms, technical and vocational education and training (TVET) institutions, workers' organisations and policy-makers.

Initially the day was marked to achieve the Incheon Declaration: Education 2030. The Incheon Declaration is a part of Sustainable Development Goal 4 that is aimed to achieve inclusive and equitable quality education and the promotion of lifelong learning opportunities for all.

World Youth Skills Day 2022

This year the whole focus of the World Youth Skills Day is on the 'Transforming Education Summit' which is going to be held in September 2022. The summit is a global event which is inspired by the youths. It is considered of major importance for the future of millions of young people. This event is "by the Youth, With the Youth and For the Youth."

The event will be organised in collaboration with the Permanent Missions of Portugal and Sri Lanka, United Nations, together with UNESCO, ILO and the Office of the Secretary-General's Envoy on Youth. It's a combined effort to bring together various stakeholders like youths, governments, UN agencies, private sector and civil society representatives for policy making in the right direction for youth skills upliftment. They will analyse the impact of current crises on the lives of youths across the world, and will address the issue of how quickly the young people can adapt to the demands of an ever-changing world.

What India Is Doing For Youth Skilling?

India in the current scenario has taken several steps in the direction of Youth Skills enhancement. Let's know about some of those steps.

• Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY): This scheme was launched in 2015 with an aim to provide free skill training to Indian Youths. Later PMKVY 3.0 was launched in 2021, under which around 300 types of skill training programs were initiated by the Government of India in order to empower the youths.
• National Career Service Portal: NCS Portal was launched in 2015 by PM Narendra Modi with an aim to replace the existing nationwide system of Employment Exchanges with IT-enabled Career Centres.
• SMART : The Skill Management and Accreditation of Training Centres provides a single window IT application that focuses on the accreditation, grading, Affiliation and Continuous monitoring of the Training Centres (TC) in the skill ecosystem.
• SANKALP : Another initiative of GoI is SANKALP. Skill Acquisition and Knowledge Awareness For Livelihood is started to strengthen the district level ecosystem in terms of career opportunity through convergence and coordination. It was initiated with the collaboration of the World Bank group.
• STRIVE : The full form is Skills Strengthening for Industrial Value Enhancement is a world bank sponsored project of GoI in order to make ITI and Apprenticeships training effective and relevant.
• PM YUVA Yojana : Pradhan Mantri Yuva Udyamita Vikas Abhiyan which was launched in 2016 is aimed at creating the ecosystem for Entrepreneurship Development by providing education and easy access to entrepreneurship support networks and Promoting social enterprises for inclusive growth.
• Kaushalacharya Award : This award is initiated by the government to motivate the skill trainers by recognizing their efforts.
• YUVA Scheme : The Young Upcoming and versatile Authors scheme launched in 2021, was an effort to inspire the young writers under 30 years of age to write on India's Freedom movements by providing Stipend as well as proper guidance from renowned authors of the Nation.
• ASEEM : The Aatmanirbhar Skilled Employee Employer Mapping portal was launched in 2020, to help skilled people find sustainable livelihood opportunities.
• For Tribal Youths: In order to empower tribal youths, the government also initiated GOAL and Van Dhan Yojana. GOAL; Going Online As Leaders -is to help tribal people to harness their art and culture, handicraft, textiles and spread digital literacy leading to entrepreneurship development. While Van - Dhan yojana is to connect the tribal society with new markets and employment opportunities.