World Day for Youth Skills

15 July is Youth Skills Day, or World Day for the Acquisition of Skills by Young People.

The theme of World Youth Empowerment Day 2023, "Empowering teachers, trainers and youth for a transformative future", highlights the essential role of teachers, trainers and other educators in the development and education of young people and in their active participation in their communities.

Turning children into young people with goals and perspectives

Many of our readers have certainly experienced it themselves: a formative adult outside the family who has been a guiding light for one's own future and orientation. Often it is teachers who accompany children and young people on the path of growing up and have a great influence. This is all the more true when children and young people have no or only limited family support. In our day centre Tranzit in Prizren/Kosovo, the teachers encourage each individual young person to discover their own strengths and to achieve a higher degree of autonomy and self-determination. Our shared vision is to help children and young people realise their dreams and become active members of society and agents of change.

Young people from difficult backgrounds need our support on their way to adulthood

Our special commitment is to those young people who face particular challenges in their transition to adult life. Tranzit in Prizren is one of our day centres where young people receive support and a sympathetic ear in addition to vocational orientation courses, music lessons and scholarships.

Children and young people who come to the CONCORDIA day centre Tranzit live under extremely precarious conditions. Many of them only share a room with their parents, siblings and often grandparents. There is usually no running water, let alone a place to do their homework.

In Kosovo, it is particularly difficult for young people from disadvantaged groups to break the intergenerational cycle of poverty. They experience exclusion and therefore little room for manoeuvre. CONCORDIA is fighting against this. At Tranzit, children and young people receive everything they need so that they no longer have the feeling of being different. We give them a jump-start so that they can successfully complete their education and find a job and their place in the adult world in the long term. Their parents are supported in improving their living conditions and parenting skills.

In the contexts in which CONCORDIA works, girls often have no access to education, gainful employment or state support. Our focus is therefore on strengthening girls' agency. Only when a society enables women to achieve full economic, physical and political autonomy does it ensure that their rights are exercised on an equal footing, thereby also guaranteeing that children and young people can develop their full potential.

To mark World Youth Skills Day today, we interviewed three young people we support at Tranzit Day Centre about their career aspirations and skills.