World Youth Skills Day – “Learning to Learn for Life and Work”
DAPP Malawi is today joining the government of Malawi and the global community in celebrating the World Youth Skills Day to raise awareness about the importance of Skills development.
DAPP Malawi through its Mikolongwe Vocational School contributes to the Technical, Entrepreneurial and Vocational Education in Malawi.
The school was established in 1997 to equip youth with technical and entrepreneurial skills for them to become self-reliant by starting up small scale businesses or be able to secure an employment.
The school offers 11 courses in formal and informal trainings which are Agriculture, Bricklaying, Carpentry & Joinery, Community Development, Financial Accounting, Textile & Fashion Designing, Beauty & Hairdressing, Renewable Energy & Electrical Installation, Plumbing & Wash Technician and Welding & Fabrication, Cobbler and Shoe Making.
Located in Mikolongwe, Traditional Authority Likoswe in Chiradzulu district, DAPP Mikolongwe has since 2016 extended its operations to reach out to more youth in rural and hard to reach areas.
With funding from Sympany of Netherlands, DAPP Malawi introduced Satellite Centres in its four Teachers Training Colleges of Chilangoma in Blantyre, Amalika in Thyolo, Dowa in Dowa and Mzimba in Mzimba districts to train adolescent girls and young women (AGYW) in Tailoring under an informal training for a period of four months.
The Satellite Tailoring project targets to train 720 between 2016 to 2020.
Similarly, Mikolongwe Vocational School is also operating a Mobile Training Centre that targets to train 270 AGYW in hard to reach areas in 6 districts of Malawi which include Mwanza, Neno, Thyolo, Phalombe, Balaka and Machinga.
With the population of Malawi mainly being youthful, there is a high unemployment rate according to https://tradingeconomics.com/malawi/unemployment-rate which stood at approximately 7 percent in 2018. DAPP Malawi moves in to train the youth under the Vocational school to equip them with entrepreneurship skills that enable the youth to start up small scale businesses.
To date, DAPP Mikolongwe has trained over 10,300 youth under the formal and informal trainings.
DAPP Malawi through Mikolongwe Vocational School continues to create a generation that is self-reliant in order to eradicate poverty in Malawi.
Mikolongwe Vocational School is registered and accredited by the Techical, Entrepreneurial and Vocational Training Authority (TEVETA) under the Ministry of Labour, Youth, Sports and Manpower Development.
