World Youth Skills Day, observed annually on 15 July, celebrates the importance of equipping young people with skills for decent employment and entrepreneurship.

This year’s World Youth Skills Day comes amid an unprecedented global crisis, and will highlight the need for helping young people develop resilience to face the challenges of employment and entrepreneurship, especially in sectors hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. These sectors include, among others, wholesale and retail trade, manufacturing, real estate, administrative activities, accommodation and food services. The short-term reactions need to have a longer-term vision in mind to ensure that we build a better future of work for this generation. This includes helping skills development systems adapt to changes brought by the pandemic and by the longer-term impact this crisis brings to the changing world of work in general.

The event is co-organized by the Permanent Missions to the United Nations of Portugal and Sri Lanka, together with UNESCO, the ILO and the Office of the Secretary-General’s Envoy on Youth. It aims to take stock of the situation young people face due to the COVID-19 pandemic, celebrate examples of resilience and innovation shown during the crisis by youth around the world, and reflect on how skills development can aid in the short-term need for economic recovery and the recurrent urgency to transition to sustainable development.

The event will also present an opportunity for ILO Director-General Guy Ryder to launch the ILO Toolkit for Quality Apprenticeships, Volume II for practitioners, as well as to announce the winner of the ILO Skills Challenge Innovation Call, a global competition to identify innovative approaches to address skills mismatch.

Join the virtual celebration that will bring together young people, representatives of member States, technical and vocational education and training (TVET) institutions and the public and private sectors, workers, policy-makers and development partners.

The online event will take place on Wednesday, 15 July from 14:00-16:00 GMT (10:00-12:00 EDT).

►To register for the event, please click here .