BANGKOK, Thailand (ILO News) – ILO and development partners from Asia and the Pacific highlighted the importance of socio-emotional skills for youth entrepreneurs in a webinar held this month.

A knowledge sharing session on 20 June 2023 saw discussion on equipping development partners with methods and tools to integrate these important skills into their existing trainings for youth entrepreneurs.

Mr Yondonjamts, Project Manager from Save the Children Mongolia, shared his experiences with the Entrepreneurship-focused Socioemotional Skills for Most Vulnerable Youth in Rural Mongolia project, which promotes socio-emotional skills for disadvantaged youth in Mongolia’s poorest rural districts to improve their performance in school and prepare them for entry into self-employment. These socio-emotional skills include communication, collaboration and teamwork, conflict resolution and negotiation.

Mr Yondonjamts highlighted the program’s Entrepreneurship-focused Socioemotional Learning curriculum (ESEL), an interactive training toolkit for young people which combines socio-emotional skills with entrepreneurial knowledge such as business plan development and financial and digital literacy. This equips youth to become entrepreneurs with a higher awareness of themselves and their environment.

Partners from Japan International Labour Foundation and AIESEC also emphasized how such skills are critical for young entrepreneurs in today’s growingly interconnected world.

“Self-awareness, resilience, and critical thinking are important soft skills as they provide the basis to enable youth to become aware of themselves and their environment and to be able to think critically and make decisions,” said Phawarin Chunsam, a former participant of JILAF’s Young Leadership Course.

Phurich Srisupetkul, Country Director of AIESEC in Thailand, spoke on AIESEC’s use of ILO’s Activity Based Learning tools (ABL) to promote sustainable entrepreneurship as an example of encouraging youth entrepreneurs to improve their skills on self-awareness, social and cultural awareness, creativity and innovation, communication, teamwork, and critical thinking. He expressed the importance of adapting the socio-emotional learning curricula and training sessions to the country context, to better engage with young participants.

The webinar is the fifth in the series of the Building Youth Capacity and Network in Asia Pacific project funded by the Government of Japan. The next webinar will take place in August 2023.

For further information please contact:

Heejin Ahn
Technical Officer on Entrepreneurship and Social and Solidarity Economy Development
ILO Decent Work Technical Support Team, Bangkok
Email: ahnh@ilo.org

Audrey Samuel
Intern – Entrepreneurship and MSME Development
ILO Decent Work Technical Support Team, Bangkok
Email: samuela@iloguest.org