Integrated labour market programmes for youth in South-East Asia training

Background

In South-East Asia, more than 18 million (or around one in six) young people are not in employment, education or training (NEET), with young women confronting even sharper disadvantages. This is a very heterogeneous group of youth that requires tailored approaches. Youth in the region face longstanding vulnerabilities in the labour market due to a number of age-specific factors, and the COVID-19 crisis only exacerbated many of these challenges. Working youth suffered widespread job disruptions from reduced working hours and earnings. Furthermore, interruptions in education and training complicated the already difficult transition from school to work and weakened employment and career prospects.

In this context, the ASEAN Secretariat, the ILO, UNICEF and other United Nations agencies in October 2023 convened the ASEAN Regional Dialogue on Young People’s Skills, Employability and Transition to Decent Work in ASEAN: Breaking Barriers, Building Futures. The forum emphasized a number of key recommendations, including the need to “enhance the design and effective implementation of comprehensive, inclusive, and gender-responsive youth employment strategies; foster policy coherence through design and operationalization of integrated strategies for decent job creation, social protection and a just transition for young people; and improve the effectiveness of public employment services (PES) to support the labour market transitions of young people.”

To support policymakers and other key youth employment stakeholders in South-East Asia to take forward these recommendations, this training course is organized by the ILO Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific in collaboration with the ITCILO and the ILO Employment Policy Department and is tailored to the capacity-building needs of the participating countries. It is designed to offer a number of modules that provide a deeper understanding of integrated labour market policies and programmes to support transitions and decent employment for young people in the region.

Objectives

• Improved their capacity to effectively design and implement gender-responsive, integrated and inclusive labour market programmes for youth in a period of dynamic labour market transformations.

• Explored the evidence on the impact and effectiveness of integrated (Active) Labour Market Policies in supporting enhanced youth employment outcomes, across diverse youth targets and subgroups, including rural and urban youth, young women, youth with disabilities, and those from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds.

• Strengthened their understanding on the powerful role that employment services may have in facilitating labour market transitions, targeting youth and different subgroups of vulnerable youth, including young NEETs.

• Become familiar with measures to foster lifelong learning and skills development in the rapidly changing world of work, including work-based learning and quality apprenticeships for young people.

• Become familiar with youth entrepreneurship promotion strategies and the acceleration of sustainable youth-led enterprises to enhance their capacity to generate more and better employment opportunities while contributing to the development of local communities.

• Examined innovations to promote partnerships (including meaningful youth engagement) and social dialogue at the regional, national and the local levels, including through South-South and Triangular Cooperation, to shape policymaking and integrated programme design as well as maximizing impact and scale up for sustainability