The project 'Skills to Build' facilitates a private-public, modular technical skills training and certification for un-/employed, vulnerable youth and existing low-skilled workers and shop owners to create employment opportunities. For this phase (2021-2024), training programmes include masonry, plumbing, sewage, water and sanitation, electricity, painting, tiling, safety, and environment & health, among others.
The project is based on the hypothesis that the development of skills and competencies for employment and self-employment will help young men and women to find better jobs and, therefore, achieve better incomes, therefore contributing to greater economic and social equity in the country.
The project aims to contribute to the structuring of the vocational training system mainly through a training with specific curricula, intended for people who have so far been excluded from the formal education system or for adults in the formal or informal labour market in the construction sector.
By offering quality vocational training through these specialised centres, the sustainability of training will be enabled. The training is carried out through the different vocational training centres who are partners of the project. The practical part takes place partly in the centre itself, and another part on the construction sites or in the facilities that require professional intervention in the area where the young people are trained. The aim is to link technical skills training with the demands and involvement of the private sector to guarantee the relevance of the training, as well as to facilitate real labour insertion.
1. Initial skills development provision for vulnerable youth - The project will target 4,500 vulnerable youth (30% women)
2. Labour market insertion (internships and labour market inclusion, as also entrepreneurship course) 2,430 skilled youth will access to the labour market.
3. Competence-based certification for already employed construction workers or workshop owners: 500 unskilled active workers (workshop owners and workers employed by construction companies, thereof 10% women)
4. Dialogue with public and private stakeholders to increase ownership and anchoring skills training in national TVET framework.
Phase I: 2017 - 2020
This project is financed by the Medicor Foundation, Happel Foundation, and U.W. Linsi-Stiftung, among other donors. It is part of the Swisscontact Development Programme, which is co-financed by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), Federal Department of Foreign Affairs FDFA.