What does international cooperation bring in terms of further education? And why does Switzerland have a responsibility in this regard? Katharina Walker, Senior Advisor for Vocational Education and Training at Helvetas, talks about the impact of networking, best practices and the GO model.
Interview: Marianne Müller
You work as a senior vocational training consultant at Helvetas. What does that involve?
Helvetas is one of the largest Swiss non-governmental organisations in the field of international cooperation. I work as a consultant for projects in emerging and developing countries in the field of vocational training. Specifically, I advise our project teams and their local partners, for example in the Western Balkans, the South Caucasus and previously in Myanmar. Together with my colleagues, I work on new education projects. I advise the project teams and their partners on site and remotely on specific challenges, for example how green skills can be promoted or how business models work in the continuing education sector. We thematic advisors also play an important role in the quality assurance of the projects. There is also a great demand for Swiss best practices, which I adapt to the local context in collaboration with partners such as SVEB. Sharing knowledge, learning from best practices and promoting innovation are important aspects of my work.
What role do you see in further training for international cooperation?
1.8 billion people are between 10 and 24 years old today – the largest youth generation in history. Almost 90 per cent of them live in developing countries, where they make up a large part of the population. When we think of further training, we may not think directly of young people, but due to a lack of or poor-quality state vocational training systems, further training plays an important role in many countries. To address climate change, workers in the fossil fuel industry need to acquire new skills. As the green transformation progresses, new occupations are emerging that are of great interest to young people, but existing employees also need to be retrained. Digitalisation is eliminating jobs, but many new ones are also emerging. New employment opportunities are constantly arising for workers with non-routine cognitive abilities and social and emotional skills.
Does Switzerland have a responsibility in this regard?
As a prosperous country with particularly strong international ties, Switzerland has a responsibility to make a positive contribution to solving global challenges. On the other hand, we also have a self-interest: education and training are important for economic growth in developing countries, which in turn strengthens our markets. Added to this are challenges such as climate, the environment, armed conflicts, migration and health, which do not stop at our borders. Switzerland can use its expertise and resources to help strengthen education, vocational training and continuing education worldwide as a means of combating poverty, preventing conflict and promoting sustainable development. Taking on this responsibility helps to promote a fairer and more sustainable world.
What are the challenges of promoting continuing education in the project countries?
Unclear and overlapping roles and responsibilities, as well as the fragmentation of the education system, make it difficult to design and implement training in many partner countries. This is compounded by limited financial resources. The already scarce public funds are mostly used for formal education. These and other challenges, such as access to training or a lack of skills among trainers, can be improved through targeted and coordinated support. Helvetas is committed to raising awareness of the benefits of training for individual and social development. To achieve effective and sustainable results, we work with a variety of local government, private and civil society partners.
To help us visualise this, can you describe an example project in which training was promoted?
The SDC project Enhancing Youth Employment (EYE) was launched in 2013 and has since been working to improve the employability of young women and men in Kosovo. Helvetas has improved cooperation between private training providers, companies and associations in growth sectors such as IT, business product outsourcing (BPO), wood processing, solar energy, retail and bakery/confectionery, thus creating the basis for market-oriented continuing education. The results are impressive: 21,000 young people have benefited. More than 30 training providers have created 104 new continuing education programmes, and ten new training providers have emerged and remain on the market thanks to sustainable business models.
The SVEB has been supporting Helvetas in various projects for several years. How can the SVEB or the Swiss continuing education system contribute to international cooperation?
With the SVEB’s GO model! It is being used in Kyrgyzstan, for example, where the aim is to develop workplace-specific courses for companies and employees. The GO model provides the know-how for workplace-specific courses for Kyrgyz companies and employees in the Swiss Embassy’s CHeber Skills Development project. The GO model is also being successfully implemented in Mozambique. As in many countries, participants lack training opportunities in basic skills and training providers are not prepared to address these deficits. As part of the SDC’s SiM project, Helvetas is working with the Ministry of Education and local literacy centres to provide short courses in reading, writing and arithmetic directly in the workplace. By sharing best practices from Switzerland, the SVEB also promotes an understanding of a market-oriented approach to continuing education in our partner countries. At various conferences and workshops, I have found that the Swiss understanding of a strong private continuing education market is met with great interest and serves as an inspiration to make formal, state-designed adult education more market-oriented.
The SVEB is working in an advisory capacity on the Education for Employment E4E project in North Macedonia. Specifically, what has the SVEB been able to contribute to this project?
The SVEB has been providing valuable advisory support and Swiss expertise in the areas of continuing education and labour market integration for the SDC’s Education for Employment (E4E) project in North Macedonia since 2017. The SVEB has been actively involved in various core areas: At the beginning of the project, the technical advice focused on the topic of labour market integration and the range of measures available for this purpose. This led, among other things, to a specialist exchange between a Macedonian delegation and the regional employment centre in Switzerland. Secondly, the SVEB supported the development of modern learning methodologies and teaching materials, which are essential for high-quality continuing vocational education and training. Thirdly, the SVEB facilitates contacts with Swiss professional organisations such as the Swiss Contractors Association, carrosserie suisse and the Professional Organisation for Environment, thereby contributing to business-oriented vocational and further training in North Macedonia. And fourthly, the SVEB advises the project on new topics in vocational training, such as green transformation and digitisation.
What is the best or most moving thing you have experienced in your work?
I was moved by the founding of the Vocational Training Information Centre (BIZ) – the first BIZ of its kind in Albania – and the motivated vocational counsellors in Tirana, Albania. As part of the SDC project RisiAlbania, Helvetas is supporting various Albanian actors in setting up and improving the vocational guidance system. In Albania, vocational training is less valued than in Switzerland and there is a lack of structures to facilitate career choice, which is why a public service like the BIZ is very important. The staff of the BIZ in Tirana have learned the work of the BIZ in Ticino from scratch (the people in Albania speak very good Italian). Various documents from Switzerland have been translated into Albanian. The University of Lausanne and the University of Tirana have adapted internationally recognised career guidance tests for use in the local context. It was a real pleasure for me to see at first hand the long-standing cooperation between Albanian and Swiss experts at the BIZ in Tirana and to know that we are making a sustainable contribution to young people’s career choices.