UNIDO promotes digital skills and social inclusion

With a focus on digital skills and social inclusion, the  LKDF Forum 2021 convened  to find solutions on 22 September 2021. The Forum gathered dozens of experts from various backgrounds; and by extending the platform for action-oriented debates, the Forum sought to provide solutions to reduce job-skill mismatch, propose solutions to bridge the digital skills gap, and to promote dialogue for future partnerships, leaving no one behind. The LKDF Forum Hackathon, which took place on 23-24 September in collaboration with the World Training Foundation and the WorldSkills International, also concluded successfully, as three teams stood out with their business and application initiatives to make the supply chain in agri-business greener.

Experts from businesses, inter-governmental organizations and academia covered topics ranging from skill needs anticipation, inclusive business innovation, digitalization in inclusive education, workforce with diverse needs, to re- and up- skilling investments, and the motivation for life-long learning.

“Youth are the future and they should be the ones saying what is needed. We need to involve young people in the decision making in order to develop the training and the upskilling that they need. A strong involvement of all stakeholders is key if we want to make education and skills accessible to all” said UNIDO’s Managing Director, Bernardo Calzadilla Sarmiento, in his final call-to-action to the international community.

The LKDF Forum is organized regularly, in cooperation with the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), as part of the Learning and Knowledge Development Facility (LKDF) – a platform that promotes industrial skills development among young people in emerging developing economies. The LKDF supports the establishment and upgrading of industrial training academies to help meet the labor market’s increasing demand for skilled employees, ultimately contributing to inclusive and sustainable industrial development (ISID).

Read the press release at the UNIDO website here.

Official recording of the LKDF Forum 2021 will be available in due course in the LKDF YouTube Channel.

For more information, contact the LKDF team at lkd-facility [at] unido.org (lkd-facility[at]unido[dot]org)