ActionAid Palestine to Celebrate World Youth Skills Day 2020 under theme of “Skills for a Resilient Youth in the Era of COVID-19 and Beyond
ActionAid Palestine (AAP) celebrated the World Youth Skills Day (WYSD) on 15th of July for 2020 under the theme of “Skills for a Resilient Youth in the Era of COVID-19 and Beyond”. This day is designated by the United Nations General Assembly to generate greater awareness around the importance of providing young people with tailored capacity building training and enhancing skills that respond effectively to their needs and priorities.
On this Occasion, AAP is stressing commitment of its programs in Gaza and West Bank towards the achievement of the 2030 agenda of sustainable development goals. AAP contributes to those goals by ensuring the access of Palestinian youth to life, vocational and technical skills development, decent work opportunities, promotion of entrepreneurship and eliminating gender disparity and increases the economic resilience of the Palestinian communities in Occupied Palestinian Territories under all conditions including the state of emergency.
During COVID-19 crisis, AAP continued enhancing youth skills in partnership with a number of local and educational organizations by supporting vocational and technological training through electronic training and virtual platforms due to lockdown. The COVID-19 pandemic has led to closures of educational and training institutions, interrupting the skill development opportunities among the youth. It has led to job cuts in some industries, creating fears among the youth regarding job market and skills they need to acquire to be competitive in the job market. AAP is currently designing interventions that seek to develop mechanisms of social accountability of youth and encourage youth to organize advocacy digital campaigns to help them to assess their needs and tools of dialogue needed for building constructive talk with decision makers and relevant organizations to demand them to fulfill their needs during and post COVID-19.
AAP adapted its humanitarian and development interventions through its progrmme of “Civil and Democratic Participation of Palestinian youth” during this crisis the field of building youth life and leadership skills. This adaptation aims to equip youth with skills that are relevant and consistent to the current state of emergency and pandemics. This adaptation eventually contributes to promoting the role of women and young people in preparedness and response actions, through a multipronged approach, that invests in their technical expertise in the field of emergency response from one hand, whilst capitalizing on their leadership and influence through existing or new decision making space, which in turn have a greater positive impact on strengthening the resilience of Palestinian society at large. Youth utilize those skills in their initiatives supported by AAP. Those initiatives show role of youth in assessing the needs of community and current threats and developing response plan for addressing them. Those skills helped youth to communicate with decision makers regarding their responsibilities and tools of interventions and active and relevant organizations to mobilize more financial and educational support needed for combating this pandemic .Emergency skills enabled youth to lead campaigns to raise awareness of their community about preventive measures to contain enabled the spread of virus through social media.
During 2020, AAP offered youth training courses as a mean for improving their social and economic conditions and decreasing rates of unemployment and underemployment in partnership with a number of youths grassroot and educational organizations. AAP promotes youth economic empowerment by supporting and funding youth internships, apprenticeship and entrepreneurship activities, in addition to establishing small-scale businesses to decrease unemployment rate and enhance their life and job.
Background Information
ActionAid
ActionAid is a global federation working for social justice and gender equality and eradicate poverty. ActionAid works worldwide to empower people living in poverty and exclusion with focus on women’s rights .ActionAid works directly and closely with communities, civil society organizations, women movements and social groups and movements and other allies to tackle root causes of poverty and oppression. ActionAid deliver grassroots programmes to utilize efforts of global struggle movements working for a just, fair and sustainable world. Based on human rights-based approach and women rights’ principles, ActionAid seeks to fairly re-distribute powers through solidarity, empowerment, awareness campaigns and creating alternatives to ensure that everybody enjoys the right to a life of dignity, and freedom from oppression.
ActionAid in Palestine (AAP) is a part of that federation which started its work in Palestine in 2007 to strengthen the resilience of Palestinian People as ActionAid believes that they should enjoy their rights to freedom, justice and self-determination. AAP implements a number of programs through its engagement with communities and women and youth groups seeking to empower them and enhance their influential civil and political participation to understand their rights and undertake collective activism to address the protracted rights violations resulting from the prolonged occupation of Palestine. AAP works simultaneously to enhance their leadership capacity and knowledge to practice their citizenship in holding authorities and other duty bearers to account.
For more information, please contact
Riham Jafari
Coordinator of Advocacy and Communication in Gaza Strip and West Bank
Mobile:
+972 (0) 595242890
Office:
+972 (0) (2) 22 13 137
Email: