What does skill development actually mean? The skill development process consists of skill training, establishing skill standards, and other related activities that assist trainees and working-age individuals to gain dexterity, knowledge, skills, and work ethics. Learning new skills especially for youth is very critical and essential to keep pace with the fast-growing world.
The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) announced in the year 2014 July and declared July 15 as World Youth Skills Day. As a result of this significant move, we can celebrate the strategic importance of preparing young people for employment, decent work, and entrepreneurship.
A large portion of our country India’s 1.4 billion population is under the age of 24. This young population must be equipped with employable skills so that economic growth can continue and even accelerate.
“In the next 5-10 years the world will shift to skill and attitudes-based hiring. Degree or university-based hiring will be a thing of the past. Problem-solving collaboration, organizational, communication and creativity are skills that are most required and are the hardest to find in today’s youth. Add on top of it missing attitudes like citizenship, sustainability, integrity and workplace ethics, which make hiring and retention extremely difficult. We need to redesign our education system and the skilling programs to support the development of these fundamental and core traits required in the future workforce, hard skills or domain-specific skills can be layered on top of these. For example, In the same ways in which we are focusing on acquainting our future workforces with Artificial Intelligence and Augmented Reality, we need to equally focus on including sustainability as a horizontal layer that sits as the foundation for all other passions and interests.” Said Manav Subodh- Managing Director of 1M1B (One Million for One Billion) Foundation.
Tarana Lalwani -Founding Partner of InnoVen Capital India said that As India becomes a global power, and the river cuts the rock through persistence, our youth have age on their side and they should look to develop their skills and be persistent about their goals, as they are the future of the country.
World Youth Skills Day is observed annually with a particular theme set by the United Nations and the Theme of the year 2022 is: “Learning and skills for life, work, and sustainable development”.
Manav Subudh added “ We need to develop sustainability as a core part of the curriculum and not a specialized subject. Because we don’t just need climate specialists in the future, but we need engineers who are dedicated to creating technology that works on green power, lawyers who are well-versed with environmental law and business leaders who are ethical and efficiently utilize resources.”
“Learning keeps you growing, opening doors and ways for new paths, and makes you adaptable and open to new possibilities. When we talk about skills, we are expected to share what skills to learn. While I would like to keep the spectrum widely open, there is one such technology that encourages me to speak about.
