GBC-Education and Deloitte launch Youth Skills Report

Millions of youth around the world face the challenge of securing meaningful employment. The growing proportion of youth lacking the basic skills to participate in the workforce correlates to unprecedented rates of youth unemployment and underemployment. At the same time, the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) is transforming how and where work is done. For today’s 1.8 billion youth who are between the ages of 15 and 29, this revolution will significantly shape their roles as the future workforce, consumers, and competitors.

As part of its Youth Skills and Innovation Initiative, the Global Business Coalition for Education joined forces with Deloitte to produce a report, “Preparing tomorrow’s workforce for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, For business: A framework for action”, that will inform business on what steps it can take to close the skills gap among today’s youth.

iMlango fully supports GBC-Education’s Youth Skills and Innovation Inititiave, and is hopeful that more businesses will take action and help develop the growing workforce of the future.

You can read and download the full report here

The iMlango Junior Debaters Contest Season 3 is here!

We are excited to announce that Season 3 of the iMlango Junior Debaters Contest has now begun!

All groups taking part have now received their iMlango group account logins ready for Round 1, which will run from Monday 10th to the end of Friday 21st of September.

Schools are advised to remind the student groups that are involved to login to view the debating motion, prepare their responses and submit them within the deadline.

Good luck to all who are taking part!

Best wishes,
The iMlango Team

iMlango invited to speak at UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s roundtable meeting on girls’ education

We were delighted to be asked to contribute to the recent Wilton Park discussion led by the Foreign and Commonwealth office centring on issues of girls’ education, where we were able to share some of our insights, especially on literacy, from our experiences in Kenya.

Girls continue to face barriers in accessing education at all levels throughout the world. According to UNESCO, 130 million girls between the age of 6 and 17 are out of school and 15 million primary school aged girls will never have access to education. Yet girls’ education is a human right which not only benefits girls themselves, but positively impacts wider community wellbeing and economic prosperity at local, regional and national levels.

iMlango's Simon Bruce Kaniu at Wiston House in Sussex, seated on the front row, five in from the left.

Simon Bruce Kaniu, iMlango Local Project Lead and sQuid Kenya General Manager delivered the talk at the Wilton Park conference, and said: “We believe the role of technology in providing an education platform accessible by all students is vital. It can’t work just on its own; there will always be a focus on the human elements of teacher skills and motivation, and the out of school factors that affect the marginalised. In Kenya, we have been trying to bring all of these components together with our iMlango partners.”

On the role of the private sector and how it can partner with governments and NGOs to improve girls' education, Simon added: "I believe that the private sector can play a key role in improving girls' education by utilising its experience in devising and driving commercial activities within programmes, to ensure that they are sustainable and continue to impact schools and the surrounding communities after initial funding has finished.

"To reach and support the most marginalised children, the private sector, governments and NGOs must work together collectively to continue to innovate, improve delivery, and drive scale within educational development programmes."

The three-day roundtable at Wiston House in Sussex aimed to produce a set of recommendations for a transnational collaborative campaign; it achieved the following:

• Identified options and recommendations to develop a new, transformative UK-led diplomatic campaign in support of 12 years of quality education;
• Identified what success looks like, including good practice and policy from the education sector and beyond on diplomatic transnational campaigns;
• Highlighted the successes of international efforts to improve girls’ education so far, map where gaps remain and recommend actions to address them; and
• Developed lasting partnerships between varying sectors and agencies to collaborate in successfully delivering campaigns leading to improvements for girls’ education

We'd like to thank Wilton Park for the invitation and for providing us with the opportunity to share our experiences and insights from the programme.

For more information on Wilton Park, please click here