Bringing Skills Training Opportunities to Rural Bangladesh

DHAKA, Aug. 9 (NsNewsWire) — In Bangladesh, often the rural people, especially young women do not have access to industry-based skills trainings as the industries are pre-dominantly mainly located in cities. To overcome the challenge, the Skills and Training Enhancement Project (STEP) in partnership with the Bangladesh Garments and Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) is providing skills training to the rural people in training centres to improve livelihoods opportunities. To date, BGMEA has trained 3,180 unskilled laborers, of whom 26% were female. 93% of the trainees have already secured jobs in the manufacturing sector. Further, the rural and poor trainees receive food, travel and accommodation facilities at a subsidized costs.

Since 2010, STEP has been working to strengthen public and private polytechnic institutions to improve the quality of skills training, align curriculum with skills market demand, and increase employability of the trainees from the poor families. To improve job market opportunities for informal workers, STEP operationalized the Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) program in 2014, to assess and certify workers’ skill level, who have no prior formal training or qualifications. The RPL program has assessed over 9,000 candidates and certified 7,533 as competent.

The Project provided stipend support to 144,615 poor students, surpassing the project target. To promote female skills training and employability through technical and vocational education, the project provides stipend to all the female diploma students since 2012. The female beneficiary share has increased from 10% to 27%, while the female trainees supported courses reached to 27% against the target of 20% between 2010 and 2016. To ensure a more market relevant curriculum, the selected polytechnic and short-course training institutions reshuffled their management committees, and included industry representatives in their decision making process.

The government has filled up 98% vacancies in the public polytechnics through appointing contractual teachers, who have further received project-supported pedagogical and subject training at home and abroad. Around 400 teachers and 20 managers from the polytechnics completed training with the Nanyang Polytechnic International, Singapore under in a partnership program. The Project is also providing grants to 33 public and private polytechnics for implementing the Institutional Development Plans. The polytechnics are regularly implementing quality enhancement activities, including in-house capacity building training and workshops, industry visits, job placement and job fair. Through support to 64 short-course training providers, Around 73,753 trainees have received training in 38 trades. More than one-fourth of the trainees are female, and about half of the graduates got jobs within six months of training.

STEP has also organized the National Skills Competition 2015 at the institution, regional and national level and awarded three top projects from the shortlisted 50 projects selected for the national level competition. In total, the project received submissions on 1800 innovative projects. These were displayed at the ‘Civil Service in Development Innovation 2016’ which took place during July 28-29, 2016 in Bangladesh.

The World Bank approved $79 million STEP project in June, 2010 and Canada approved grants equivalent to $20 million in March, 2013. Building on the success of the project, an additional financing of $100 million from the World Bank was approved on October 30, 2015. Under the additional financing, the project will reach out to more institutions with its successful activities and introduce many new interventions.