I have been working as an adviser to Deloitte and the Tawteen Council on how to build the necessary infrastructure to create long term sustainable employment for the people of Abu Dhabi This imaginative programme is a key element of the strategy outlined in Abu Dhabi Vision 2030 which seeks “to achieve economic diversification and to build a thriving knowledge economy.... creating a huge opportunity for sustainable Emiritization to deliver social inclusion and economic security.”

This is a fascinating project encompassing the development of institutions and organisations for both supply and demand in the Abu Dhabi job market. We are looking at how employers define their current and future skills needs and how jobseekers can meet this demand. A strong local team from both Deloitte and Tawteen are putting huge energy and imagination into how to create a thriving and productive job market to meet the 2030 Vision for the Emirate.

I attended a very practical and informative conference at which wide variety of experts came to Damascus on the 23/4th of January to discuss the development of a Civil Society in Syria.

Lord Malloch Brown in his opening speech stressed the need for a effective tri-partite partnership between Government, Civil Society and Business in a market-oriented economy. As Syria moves towards a social market model the need for a strong Civil Society has become increasingly apparent. As we were informed, Syria has around 1000 NGOs compared with 20,000+ in Egypt and 9,000 in Jordan.

The conference discussed the development of a Civil Society from a number of perspectives. We looked at issues such as Youth Employment and Empoyability, Rural Development and Culture. We debated how to build capacity and competance, how to balance regulation and freedom to innovate and how to encourage both central and local initiatives.

In a powerful speech Her Excellency Mr Asma Al Assad stressed the need for an effective civil society working in close partnership with government and business. The Syria Trust set up under her patronage has created as a catalyst to hasten the growth of a strong Civil Society. Although focussing on certain issues such as youth, rural matters and heritage it also has a role to provide a model of good practices developed to meet the specific needs of Syrian Society.

I presented a discussion paper on Youth Employability and Entrepreneurship which addressed one of the key issues facing Syrian society, namely Youth Unemployment which can be found under Publications.

Tags: syria

Colleagues recently returned to Kenya to see how some of the young people we helped are getting on. You may be interested in the following film showing some of the rewarding results of our work

http://www.youtube.com/user/streetkidsintl#p/a/u/0/SqhnTBiowNc

We have request from local NGOs throughut Africa and are seeking funds and resources to help them from all our supporters and like-minded funding organisations.

Tags: street kids

Philippa Frankl our Executive Director held a December workshop in Mumbai on our methodologies for helping street kids create a livelihood for themselves. The workshop covered self-employment, financial awareness and independence and employability. Over 15 local youth organisations came to hear Philippa. They are working with kids found scavenging in the slums, sleeping rough or arriving at the train and bus stations.

The reaction to our training materials and methods was very enthusiastic and Philippa has been asked to return in March to to run a pilot training course that we hope to extend to many more youth organisations both in Mumbai and the rest of India.

Tags: street kids

On June 19th I visited the Wuhan Youth Palace where the Association plans to carry out its first pilot learning -to-learn programmes. We were really impressed with the facilities which serve 10,000 young people a week providing them with training courses and a wide range of extra-curricular activities.

Mr Li and his team gave us a tremendous welcome and we had some very thoughtful discussions on how to broaden the offer available to young people in Wuhan to meet the vision of the China Youth Development Complex project which is “to help young people learn through experience the creativity, life skills and global citizenship they need to lead fulfilled lives”.

We also visited a couple of Teen-zones, a very new idea developed by the ACYF (All China Youth Federation) to extend the reach of the work of Youth Palaces to many more young people. As can be seen from the photo below these are located in the heart of city communities and provide a space for young people to chill out and try new ideas and programmes outside the normal school curriculum.