Cotvet Commemorates World Youth Skills Day 2019

The Council for Technical and Vocational Education and Training (COTVET) joins the World on 15^th July, 2019 to commemorate the World Youth Skills Day (WYSD). The United Nations, at its General Assembly in November 2014, declared 15 July as World Youth Skills Day. The aim of WYSD is to advocate for skills as an important factor to improve young people’s transitions to decent work, and to highlight the crucial role of skilled youth in addressing today’s most challenging global issues. This year’s theme is “Learning to learn for life and work”. The Council for Technical and Vocational Education and Training therefore wishes to use this opportunity to salute our gallant youth for their contribution in building the country.

COTVET takes a lot of inspiration from the theme considering the enormous work and reforms it has undertaken to strengthen our various Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) institutions to impart high quality skills and knowledge unto our youth who are taking the world by storm.

In the month of June, 2019, Ghana was announced by the World Skills International as its 81^st member country. This announcement was timely since it has afforded the youth of this country to join the rest of the world as we improve on skills acquisition for the world of work. Delegates from Ghana including some of the students who were champions in the Ghana Skills Competitions and World Skills Africa Kigali 2018 competition would be attending the event. Ghana will officially be outdoored during the event.

We are happy to announce that preparations are seriously ongoing to grant the youth of our country, the opportunity on the world’s biggest skills platform to learn for life and work.

COTVET strongly believes that the World Skills International’s General Assembly acceptance of Ghana in Kazan will be a turning point in the lives of our youth considering the impact of the exposure at the WorldSkills.

In addition, COTVET also launched a campaign dubbed MyTVET, on 12^th June 2019. MyTVET, My Skills, My Future is to help change negative perceptions about TVET in Ghana and increase enrollment in Technical and Vocational Institutions. The overall campaign objective is to inspire world-class excellence in skills development and to introduce the youth to a variety of skilled careers, using tools such as National Skills Competitions, TVET Clubs in Junior High Schools, TVET Ambassadors and Role Models and career guidance and counselling.

We would like to urge the youth to consider skills training as their number one choice. Skills acquisition can lead to enormous opportunities on the job market. COTVET would like to assure you that you made the right decision by taking that bold step to learn for life and work.

As we celebrate the skills of our youth today, we would like to acknowledge our various industries as well as entrepreneurs who employ these youth after skills training to earn a living.

Once again, Ayekoo!

DR. FRED KYEI ASAMOAH

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR