UNDP, within “Unleashing Employment and Income Generating Opportunities for Youth in the Regions of Armenia” project funded by the Russian Federation, has fully supported First Global Career Month (November 08 - December 13, 2022) jointly announced by the EU, ETF, OECD, UNESCO, WB and ILO with the aim to spotlight once again the importance of career guidance and professional orientation in helping youth to access decent work and in supporting young people to develop their careers.

Series of online and off-line trainings have been conducted by UNDP for about 100 TVETIs career guidance specialists from all 98 TVET institutions located across Armenia. November online webinar has been marked by participation of the European Training Foundation (ETF) career guidance experts, while 2-day offline training delivered by “CareerLab” NGO mobilized the best local resources, HR managers as well as career guidance trainers to highlight the importance of strong relationship between TVET institutions and employers, to introduce the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), as well as to present handy tools on planning and analyses of labour market information for practical application at institutional level for better employability of TVET graduates.

Curricula of the training program was defined by UNDP in close consultation with the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sport. So, the content of the training program was aligned with the methodological bases of Career Centers operations at the level of vocational education and training institutions, as well as referred to the international best practices and recent trends in the field of career guidance training provisions. 

Karine Simonyan, UNDP “Unleashing Employment and Income Generating Opportunities for Youth in the Regions of Armenia” Project Coordinator in her welcoming remarks  emphasized that UNDP, heavily investing in capacity building of career guidance specialists, believes that career guidance supports the development of a more adaptive and resilient workforce which can result in competitive gains for local enterprises as well as can contribute to the transformation of the national economy into a knowledge-based economy characterized by innovation, entrepreneurship, and excellence in education.

The results of the training program have contributed to the strengthening of professional network and knowledge-sharing on positive practices of career guidance specialists of the TVETIs. The participants had the opportunity to discuss with their peers how to enhance quality of career support system in the context of the newly established unified social services, education and training institutions.

The training program reached its twofold objectives: strengthening capacities of career guidance specialists based on the training’s final assessment results; and informing national agenda of TVET and youth employment reforms through mapped challenges and opportunities of career guidance system as well as identified solutions to the problems to further supply policymakers and service providers with evidence-based information for informed-decision-making in wider public policy reforms in education, lifelong learning, social inclusion, and employment.