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World Youth Skills Day 2022



GrowZA is excited to kick off our World Youth Skills Day (15 July) campaign culminating in the Stockholm Junior Water Prize in Sweden on 29 August 2022!


Why is World Youth Skills Day important?

In 2014, the United Nations General Assembly declared 15 July as World Youth Skills Day, to celebrate the strategic importance of equipping young people with skills for employment, decent work and entrepreneurship. Since then, World Youth Skills Day events have provided a unique opportunity for dialogue between young people, technical and vocational education and training (TVET) institutions, firms, employers’ and workers’ organizations, policy makers and development partners. Participants have highlighted the ever-increasing significance of skills as the world is embarking on a transition towards a sustainable model of development.


Up to 20m increasingly well-educated young people are set to join Africa’s labour force every year for the coming three decades. As the World Economic Forum has argued, ensuring we have a strong ecosystem to offer quality jobs — and the skills to match — will be imperative if we are to fully leverage this demographic dividend.


By 2030, about a quarter of the world’s population under the age of 25 will be in or from Africa. So the economic prospects not only of Africa but of the world depend on the skills, capabilities and productivity of our youth.


Given this backdrop, GrowZA innovation programming is structured to feed into an innovation ecosystem to deliver longtail development and economic opportunity to African youth.


The African expression of the Stockholm Junior Water prize programme managed by GrowZA is an example of this ecosystem build. The programme is delivered across a system of partners including teachers, mentors, industry specialists and of course high school learners in South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria.

The programme gives the learners access to a guided innovation platform where they ideate, prototype and stress test ideas to counteract climate change and preserve water resources. These innovations are exposed to a mentor network where the conceptual projects are refined and prepared for final presentation to a panel of industry professionals with the national winners progressing to the global finals event in Stockholm.


These young entrants are all offered scholarships in water-related fields and are ultimately absorbed into job opportunities within the industry support network of the programme.


We are proud to showcase this project this World Youth Skills day and welcome you to join us on this journey as we #GrowZA


If you need any advise or support to develop or deliver your impact programmes feel free to contact us at grow@growza.co.za


Download the latest report (March 2021) by the World Youth Parliament for Water below for a comprehensive endorsement of this approach and programme.





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