Skill Development Initiatives towards Youth Development in Bangladesh: A Critical Analysis
Keywords:
Skill development, Development initiatives, Youth Development, Employment, BangladeshAbstract
Bangladesh currently enjoys an average age of 27 years among its people, meaning that almost two-third of the population refers to young people. Each year, around 2.2 million new entrants join the workforce, but only about 1.2 million could find absorption in government and non-government employment opportunities. One of the greatest challenges that this particular concern is underemployment, in which skills learned from the training do not meet what employers demand. This leaves much yielding contributions of young people to economic productivity under-exploited. Some pieces of evidence demonstrate that vocational and technical training programmes do not always fit the market requirements, showing thus that there are gaps when it comes to employability. Taking these into consideration, the study intends to critically analyze the government-led efforts in skill development for the youths in order to identify the challenges. Relying primarily on secondary sources and a qualitative review, the study proposes practical measures for strengthening existing policies and programmes. The findings are expected to provide useful insights for both policymakers and academic discourse on youth development in Bangladesh.
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