European Youth Forum at the OECD Forum

This week (5th-6th May) the European Youth Forum is taking part in the OECD Forum 2014, Resilient Economies for Inclusive Societies, in Paris.

The event is organised around three cross-cutting themes: Inclusive Growth, Jobs, and Trust. It aims to explore the multifaceted nature of resilience and how to now “bounce forward” in addressing economic, social, and environmental challenges.

Giuseppe Porcaro, Secretary General of the European Youth Forum was invited to take part in the ‘idea factory’ on the subject of ‘the Talent Gap’. This panel was a slightly unusual session of the OECD, designed so as to encourage audience participation.

The issue of the talent gap is a broad one; it covers the wages gap, the learning gap, but also the skills gap, as well as issues to do with entrepreneurship and mobility. All participants were divided into small groups to target one of these aspects.

This was a great opportunity for the Youth Forum to stress the importance of skills learnt through non-formal education. And, through the session, we aimed to explore what kind of skills are needed and what civil society and the private sector currently offers.

One interesting outcome of the discussion was the need to address how to engage people, especially young people and the need for active policies to support this engagement.

You can watch the conference, via the web stream here:

http://webcastcdn.viewontv.com/client/oecd/forum2014/

More information about the OECD Forum can be found here: http://www.oecd.org/media/oecdorg/satellitesites/oecdforum/OECD-Forum-2014-programme-4-May.pdf