Lao students practicing table arrangements

Luxembourg and Switzerland, together with the Ministry of Education and Sports, have joined hands for a vocational education and skills development project titled “Skills for Tourism – Human Resources Development in the Tourism and Hospitality Sector”.

The projectwill allow for improvements in tourism and hospitality vocational education and skills development in Lao PDR through enhanced quality, financing and governance.

The Skills for Tourism project is supported by Luxembourg and Switzerland.  It is worth 15 million Euros, will run from 2016-2020, and is being implemented by the Vocational Education Department, Ministry of Education and Sports.

An emphasis of the project will be to support disadvantaged youths from poor families in acquiring the skills needed to work in hotels, restaurants and the greater tourism economy in Lao PDR.

The project will provide skills training for the tourism industry for 1,000-2,000 participants per year.

A press conference to launch the project was held on November 1, in Vientiane Capital under the chairmanship of Deputy Minister of Education and Sports Mr Kongsy Sengmany, a representative of Luxembourg and a representative of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation to the Mekong Region.

The project LAO/029 will be embedded as much as possible into the existing institutional framework of the Lao PDR national skills development system in order to assure alignment with national strategies, policies and plans, to facilitate systemic changes and scaling-up of the project, to avoid parallel structures and duplication of efforts, and to increase the sustainability of the engendered innovations.

The project contributes to the following overall objective: Promotion of sustainable and inclusive growth of the Lao PDR tourism and hospitality sector, thereby contributing to the reduction of poverty.

The specific objective of the intervention is as follows:  Graduates of the improved and expanded tourism and hospitality skills development program, including the disadvantaged, will find gainful employment in the tourism and hospitality industry.

The rationale is also relevant to SDC’s Mekong Region Strategy 2013-2017 in which the goal is for rural women and men, mostly those belonging to ethnic minorities, to acquire skills and find work, which will allow them to benefit from economic development and earn higher incomes.

Source:
courtesy of KPL NEWS AGENCY

by KPL

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