In March 2015, with support from the European Union, the Institute for International Cooperation of the German Adult Education Association (DVV International) initiated a new 3-year Project called “Youth Empowerment toward Sustainability and Change” (YES to Change), within the framework of the EU “Peace Building Partnership Programme”. The project is funded by the European Union (494,096 Euros = 80%) and the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (130,904 Euros = 20%). The Project activity targets 7 districts of Badakhshan and its capital town Khorog.
The Project intends to strengthen institutional capacity of the Badakhshan regional Adult Training Centre to provide vocational training to youth in all the 7 districts. To achieve this, the Project plans:
1. To strengthen internal human capacity of the Khorog ATC, via staff trainings on:
a) Identification of the local labour market educational needs”;
b) “Development of Human Resources”;
c) “Strategic planning”;
d) “4 new vocational courses”.
e) Development of a pool of 16 master trainers on the 4 vocational courses.
2. To strengthen technical capacity/ resources of the Khorog ATC, via:
a) Donation of a vehicle for initiation of mobile vocational courses;
b) Development/ amendment of the 4 vocational training materials and handover to the ATC;
c) Donation of tool kits on the 4 professions to the ATC;
d) Financial support to provide work materials to the mobile courses;
e) Initiation of a mobile vocational training programme, to improve access of the rural areas to vocational education.
The Programme plans to train and certify 560 youth from the 7 districts on the 4 professions identified in the survey. The trained youth will benefit from the 2 other project components: Access of the trained youth to the business start-up grants programme (implemented by the local partner organization “Madina”) and “Civic Education Programme” trainings & grant funds, implemented by the other local partner organization “Kalam”.