ILO/Lebanon: Guidelines for non-formal market-based skills training

Contact details

Submitted by: 

• Patrick Daru, Senior Skills and Employability Specialist, International Labour Organization
• Christine Hofmann, Skills and Employability Specialist, International Labour Organization

Website: 

https://www.ilo.org/beirut/projects/WCMS_565202/lang--en/index.htm

Introduction to the project 

Country

Lebanon

Duration

January 2017 - March 2020

Description

Through its partnerships with UNICEF, Italy and the global SKILL-Up programme, the ILO’s guidelines for non-formal market-based skills training are used to train NGOs that offer trainings to refugees. They complement ongoing initiatives aiming to enhance the Technical & Vocational Education & Training (TVET) system with the view to ensure fair and smooth transitions of host community and refugee youth into the labour market. To do so, it addresses the challenges and needs identified within the formal and non-formal TVET sector mapping at both policy level and capacity development level of service providers.

The guidelines include 21 principles across four main dimensions, (i) market analysis and identification of skills gaps, (ii) curriculum design and training implementation, (iii) post-training support, (iv) evaluation of training outcomes.

They were used to train NGOs, and tracer studies to measure their results are currently underway.

Project aims 

In an environment where a significant share of training is offered by non-formal providers such as NGOs, the project has two main aims:

• It works to improve the availability and quality of labour market information at community and national level.
• It uses this information to increase the labour market relevance of specific formal but also non-formal TVET curricula and standards for youth.

Resources used 

Technical assistance to develop guidelines and build capacity.

Main activities of the Good Practice

Skills programmes are often the first response to facilitate refugees’ access to the labour market. However, especially in emergencies they are often not linked to labour market needs.

Assisting local training providers and NGOs to increase the labour market relevance of their training programs the project helps to:

• Ease the pressures on host countries;

Enhance refugee self-reliance.

Partners

• Lebanese livelihoods cluster
• United Nations Development Programme
• Italian Agency of Development Cooperation
• United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund

Challenges and how they were overcome

Challenges included: A limited number of sectors in the Lebanese labour market are legally accessible to refugees. This reduces the potential impact of labour-market relevant training.

To overcome these: Constant advocacy to open the labour market to refugees was utilized.

Results of the Good Practice 

• The ILO’s guidelines for non-formal market-based skills training, increase the labour market relevance of specific formal but also non-formal TVET curricula with the view to ensure fair and smooth transition of host community and refugee youth into the labour market.
• They constitute an important milestone towards standardizing practices for non-formal training in Lebanon.
• This is an important building block of the humanitarian–development nexus, as it offers concrete actions to improve the longer-term impacts of short-term training programmes.

Next steps 

The guidelines were used to train NGOs that offer trainings to refugees. Tracer studies to measure the labour market outcomes of undergoing market-based non-formal training are currently underway.

Furthermore, a vocational training pilot specifically applying the guidelines is currently being launched within the SKILL-UP programme and will conclude by June 2020. The pilot will provide further evidence of the impact of market-based non-formal training.

Once the results of the tracer studies confirm the validity of the approach, it is hoped that the harmonisation of practices will be strengthened through the adoption of the Guideline’s 21 principles as system-wide standard operating procedures.

The guidelines may also be used as a basis for exchanging good practices, either through peer reviews or collective knowledge-exchange exercises among non-formal training providers.