Over the past few years Pakistan has lost its competitive position in Global Competitiveness Index, which dropped from 101 to 123 in 2010-11. This is one of the lowest amongst countries in not at global level but also at South Asia level. The Government of Pakistan has made skills development a national priority to achieve sustained economic and social development, global competitiveness and abili
ty to respond changes in technology and work patterns. Oxfam Novib in collaboration with its three implementing partners Indus Resource Center (IRC), Research and Development Foundation (RDF) and Butterfly Works (BfW) has conceptualized and designed the project ‘enhancing quality and access to TVET for employability – EQUATE project’ with the aim to address two impending problems including that the people in rural areas in Pakistan do not have sufficient opportunities to build or enhance their skills that will allow them to improve their employability and increase income, while the second problem to be addressed is that in rural areas, labour supply and demand are not met. Workers, with a certain degree of skills, in rural areas are not able to find suitable paid employment. EQUATE will target rural and marginalized segments including poorly educated and/or high school graduate women, school drop-outs and the disabled in Sindh. Another target group will be the rural groups suffering from rapidly deteriorating agricultural land, increasing population, and very limited opportunities for off-farm livelihoods due to lack of technical and vocational skills. RDF is partnering with Oxfam Novib in districts Dadu and Jamshoro to impart technical skills among 2,030 youth (male, female and disabled). Apart from this the capacities of around 960 rural women entrepreneurs are also expected to be developed in order to enable them to produce marketable products and link them with urban market outlets.
