During the project we had to come together as a team. We brainstormed and discussed how we can contribute and involve girls in sustaining a clean environment. The project has gone so far as to receiving attention on social media. Being a leader has given me so much confidence in myself, especially learning from the sessions on autonomy and self-discovery. This has opened my eyes to the fact that there is so much more to do for the environment, that giving back to society rather than just expecting is important, and that it's important to tell other girls that a clean and sustainable environment matters
Ms. Chinwendu Ukaha, Nigeria, GSA beneficiary at the Women@DIOR program
Ms. Alexa Joyce, Director of EMEA Digital Transformation & Skills at Microsoft and one of the partners of the GSA, emphasized her interest in looking into potential cross linkages among GSA partners and a more comprehensive implementation at national level, pointing out the increased demand and interest in building more sophisticated digital literacy learning opportunities.
Plans to improve the Global Skills Academy
The last part of the meeting covered the next steps of the GSA. Mr. Huot-Marchand recalled the need to think beyond COVID-19, and to reflect on how the GSA can establish itself as a more demand-driven initiative in the framework of the future labour market and skills needs.
Mr. Huot-Marchand described the key assets of the GSA as being the possibility to capitalize on the pilot phase; the fruitful partnership with the private sector; the potential interlinkages with other international organisations, and the high request from countries. However, some of the main obstacles of the GSA were reaching end beneficiaries through online training despite the lack of infrastructure, connectivity issues and restrained financial resources, as well as difficulties identifying which soft and hard skills are needed the most.
During the discussion, partners mentioned, among other things, a need to establish a monitoring tool to make sure that institutions can trace what students are doing with the skills they are learning; a need to better understand the skills needs at country level so that the GSA can effectively cater to them, and finally engaging even more with international organisations.
The Global Skills Academy (GSA), was launched by UNESCO on World Youth Skills Day in July 2020 with the aim to help one million young people and adults build skills for employability and resilience by June 2021. The GSA is under the umbrella of the Global Education Coalition and offers free online trainings to respond to the growing consequences of COVID-19 on skills development and youth employment around the world. Its priority focus is on boosting digital competencies among youth in the least developed countries.
Training opportunities cover a variety of areas including digital, entrepreneurial and leadership skills and are provided in various languages including English, French and Spanish, targeting not only students, young job seekers and entrepreneurs, but also education professionals such as teachers, trainers, instructional designers and administrative personnel. As part of UNESCO's efforts to cater to different context-specific skills needs, beneficiaries are identified with the help of the global UNEVOC network to ensure relevant matching the demand and supply.
