SOLIFEM will work to enhance countries’ capacity for skills development and recognition systems, with a focus on women and youth.
SOLIFEM will support the strengthening of national skills training and skills recognition systems to enable young people and women in the informal economy to become more employable and access formal employment and decent work.
The project will establish an initial diagnosis by mapping skills, training delivery mechanisms and employability gaps among workers in the informal economy, at national or sector level. Based on this mapping, capacity-building activities will be realized to strengthen existing national skills development systems, including the upgrading of informal apprenticeship systems. Current training offers are often ill-suited to the needs of informal economy workers, and opportunity costs are high for micro and small businesses to attend training.
Many informal economy workers possess employable skills, but do not have recognized credentials to demonstrate their competence to potential employers. This puts them at a disadvantage in formal labour markets. The project will support the development and implementation of frameworks for national Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) systems for informal economy workers to help them obtain full or partial qualifications and facilitate their transitions to formal jobs. This will be achieved through capacity building of tripartite constituents, and pilots for selected occupations to validate the approach for extension to other occupations in the future.
- ZSOLIFEM will draw lessons learned from previous ILO interventions and will assess how skills are acquired in the informal economy and to identify skills in demand;
- ZInvolve informal economy actors in the design of skills-based interventions;
- ZProvide guidance on flexible skills development solutions (e.g. timing, admission criteria, duration and positioning within national qualification systems);
- ZConduct advocacy with high-level decision-makers on the role of formal TVET institutions in addressing the skills needs of informal economy actors.
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