The Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA Implements Its first phase of the Youth and Women Empowerment Program
The Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA), under its flagship fellowship program Capacity Improvement and Advancement for Tomorrow (CIAT), has implemented the first phase of its Youth and Women Empowerment Program.
The program is aimed at improving the quality of TVETs in Kenya by developing the competency of TVET instructors’ teaching methods and curriculum.
The organization has conducted a capacity-building training seminar targeting 20 TVET Sector working-level officials and instructors from Kakamega County.
A group of education experts from South Korea led by Professor Kim Duk Ho and Professor Lee Ji Yeon attended the seminar and highlighted the importance of competency-based education for young men and women.
They shared that there is always a race between technology and education and that is the reason many graduates, especially from the TVET sector experience a skills mismatch in the job market.
“Companies are spending a lot of money in re-training graduates from TVET institutions to fit in their job description and meet the current technology in their companies which makes them not create more employment space across the board. But with competency-based education, the young men and women will be able to get skills at their tender age that closely matches the technology being used in the industries,” said Professor Kim Duk Ho.
Prof Lee Ji-Yeon said: “Competency-based education will be the best for learners who are still young and will mold their growth in education hence fit in TVET and tertiary curriculum easily.”
In her presentation, she was able to show the participants that the future of education and skills 2030 calls for a holistic concept of competency that involves a delicate balance of knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values in order to be able to meet the complex demands of the modern workplace.
The experts also said that in order to meet the emerging technologies in modern industries, TVETs and other tertiary institutions need to work very closely with industries and companies as one of the key stakeholders when it comes to curriculum development.
Regular curriculum reviews should be conducted and importantly these reviews should come from an informed position of Job analyses. This alone has great potential in addressing the issue of unemployment among young men and women graduating from TVET institutions.
Zakayo Mutonga who is the acting manager at NITA Athi River Center said that many TVET institutions in the country struggle with the issue of finding internship and job opportunities for their learners and graduates respectively and the solution to that are partnering with the industry players. He said that the NITA Athi River Center has greatly benefitted from these kinds of partnerships as they no longer worry about internship opportunities for their learners.
Their flagship partnerships include fashion design with EPZ, E-waste management with CSFK & WEE Centre, Plumbing with Trident Plumbers, and Auto Electric with Hyundai Dream Center.
The event organizer, Mr. Jooyong Choi said that improving the effectiveness of TVETs has the direct effect of empowering women and youth graduates for self-sustainable development. This is important because the majority of the Kenyan population is the youth.
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