A humble plea has been made to the country’s private sector and corporate entities to set aside a small portion of their CSR funds for the purpose of ensuring rural youth are provided with an education that brings them career opportunities, leading to becoming future employees of the corporate world. This plea was made by [...]

Feeds Editorials Times Online

The Sundaytimes Sri Lanka

Corporate sector must help in skills development of rural youth

View(s):

A humble plea has been made to the country’s private sector and corporate entities to set aside a small portion of their CSR funds for the purpose of ensuring rural youth are provided with an education that brings them career opportunities, leading to becoming future employees of the corporate world.

This plea was made by Kamal Abeysinghe, Chairman, EDEX of the Royal College Union when he addressed the media last week at a function held in Colombo to announce the EDEX Expo Exhibition to be held in Colombo on 19-20 January 2013 and in Kandy on 25-26 January.

He said that the country lacks youth with a science, engineering and mathematics background specially in rural Sri Lanka, pointing out that 22% of the student population follow science and another 25% follow the commerce stream while the bulk – 43% undertake arts.
He said that their attempts to make the parents and students aware of the available competitions and career opportunities are partially successful as it is felt that the urban students and parents have now gained fair awareness of these opportunities because of their campaign. He said this awareness is yet to reach the rural youth and to fill this gap, they have taken several initiatives. In addition to awareness programmes, EDEX has also taken steps to provide library and ICT facilities to some very remote rural schools. Facilities have been given to nine such schools and seven more are in the pipeline.

To make Sri Lankan youth internationally competitive and to face future challenges, Mr Abeysinghe stressed that the next generation should be equipped with full knowledge of ICT and mathematics, in the backdrop of challenges such as climate change, high carbon emission, Nano technology, emerging ground-breaking ICT knowledge, biodiversity with ecological balance etc and said that they are essential for the country’s future.

He said that uplifting and strengthening employability of the rural youth with a technologically based education, would also contribute to alleviate poverty as poverty is rampant in rural Sri Lanka.

The Ceylon Chamber of Commerce is one of the strategic partners of the EDEX and its Vice Chairman, Samantha Ranatunge said that they have 500 member institutions and the trade chambers would be able to link the job seekers and job providers.
(QP)




Share This Post

DeliciousDiggGoogleStumbleuponRedditTechnoratiYahooBloggerMyspace
comments powered by Disqus

Advertising Rates

Please contact the advertising office on 011 - 2479521 for the advertising rates.