Building skills for resilient youth #WorldYouthSkillsDay
July 15th marks the global celebrations for World Youth Skills Day (WYSD). The aim of WYSD is to recognize the strategic importance of equipping young people with skills for employment, decent work and entrepreneurship, and to highlight the crucial role of skilled youth in addressing current and future global challenges. This year’s world youth skills day is taking place under difficult conditions; focusing on resilience, the World Youth Skills Day 2020 will take stock of the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on skills development and explore strategies in response to the unfolding economic crisis.
KTDA Foundation contributes to nurturing responsible youth through supporting various educational initiatives across the 69 KTDA managed factory catchment areas. As part of these initiatives, the Foundation launched a STEM Educational Mentorship program in August 2019 that aimed at engaging students from tea-growing areas in STEM programs that included coding and robotics. This program is designed to impart skills such as critical thinking and problem solving along with soft skills such as cooperation and adaptability that are necessary to survive post-secondary school education
The COVID-19 pandemic has led to the closure of learning institutions, hence hindering the continuity of skills development for students globally. To ensure continuity with our STEM Mentorship program amidst the pandemic, KTDA Foundation in partnership with Playpoint EA is piloting a virtual robotics and coding program via Zoom and Google Classroom that will see 240 students and 20 teachers from KTDA Foundation tea-growing zones learn skills in robotics and coding.
The program is being redesigned with a focus on resilience and will include social dynamics that will prepare the learners with the capacities to respond to rapid changes so to adapt to changes in the world economy that the pandemic will bring.