One of the blessings of international days is that they take us beyond our local world into the world community. That broadens our vision. It also helps us to notice the good and bad things in our own society that we may have failed to see.
World Youth Skills Day (15 July) recognises a great need throughout the world, which is echoed in Australia. Almost everywhere unemployment has increased in recent years, and youth unemployment is up to six times greater than adult unemployment. At the same time more young people are forced to work for wages that are too small to support them. As skills in IT and computer technology become more central to workplaces of the future, too, the gap between those who have computers and so are able to learn necessary skills and those without such skills also grows. The number of people who are unemployed and hungry keeps increasing.
In such a world young people need to be able to develop the skills they need in order to contribute to their society. This demands finding ways to make available to them the technologies they will later use. It also means devising programs. Of themselves, however programs are not enough. In refugee camps a generation ago, for example, volunteers helped young people develop the skills necessary to maintain and to repair cars. Those who took part grew in confidence and could find work in villages and towns. Unfortunately, at the same time carmakers were installing more complex and integrated electronic systems. These meant that parts were simply replaced from overseas. As a result mechanics lost work and feared for their future. The teaching of skills then had to take account of changes in society.
For that reason, World Skills Day is about more than skills. It is about the persons who will have those skills. It reminds us of the need to place in a wider context the needs of young people and the place of skills in meeting those needs. The challenge posed by the unemployment of young people and their lack of necessary training is not just to develop their skills but to make them the focus of our economy. If they lack appropriate skills and have no access to education, the fault lies in the priorities of the society in which they grow. The test of its health is seen as economic growth, even if this is marked by gross inequality between the very wealthy and the very poor. When economic efficiency is made an idol, young people will live in poverty with little opportunity to find meaningful work.
In accompaniment of young people, we need to focus on building relationships based in respect. From this can grow self-respect and the self-confidence necessary to gain the skills and the qualities that will help them to find employment. Like all of us, they have to be seen as a gift in order to make their gifts available to society.
World Skills Day is an aspiration. It will become a reality when a narrow focus on economic growth produced by competition between individuals is replaced by concern for the good of all people in society. Where the good of the community is put first, the priority will be given to educating young people to be good and resourceful persons, who will acquire the skills needed in their society.