European Year of Skills
#EUYearofSkills
Every year is dedicated to a universal but also to a very European topic. Last year we celebrated the Youth, 2023 is a nod to skills. One could find being skilled in something quite obvious but it is not. Specific sectors are in desperate need of skilled employees, there are skills today that did not even exist a few years ago. Continuous innovation and changes in perspectives demand new competencies. A skilled workforce enjoys better job opportunities while contributing to sustainable growth and fueling innovation and further improvement. How to keep up with these everchanging times? Lifelong learning can be the answer to that.
Lifelong learning is key
While formal education generally ends after adolescence learning should not. Even though stepping out into the labour market during our late teenage years, the constant changes in technology and industry will not match our schoolbook knowledge. The lifelong learning principle enhances our employability and makes us more competitive, while it helps us be more adaptive and more resilient. This principle is close to European Commission’s and UNESCO’s heart and has an agenda for boosting competitiveness via lifelong learning.
Skills in numbers
According to the EC’s studies, 77% of EU companies experience difficulties to find workers with the necessary skills, 4 out of 10 adults, and every third person who works in Europe lacks basic digital skills. Women are seriously underrepresented in tech-related fields which is also an issue. To tackle these issues European Year of Skills will provide a fresh impetus to reach the EU social target 2030 and 2030 Digital Compass’s targets of reaching 80% of adult digital literacy, and employing 20 million people in the ICT (Information and communication technology) sector.
ATHU programme excels in skill improvement
This year we will take a look back at our projects which did their best in skill development. We supported projects focusing on basic, entrepreneurial, digital, robotics, and language learning skills for the most diverse target groups: from kindergarten children, through university students, career starters, and career changers, to retired citizens. Competitiveness is at the heart of these projects and besides these highly innovative areas of skills, sometimes hundreds of years old skills can be just as competitive as the most recent ones. Interesting, right? Our #EUYearofSkills campaign is running on our Facebook and LinkedIn sites where you can have a closer look at our related projects. There is more to come during the year so stay tuned and, in the meantime, get skilled!