New tech voc, curriculum drafted

MANILA, Philippines — To break the division along gender lines in technical vocational (tech-voc) education, the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) are coming out with a gender-sensitivity training curriculum.

TESDA Director General Joel Villanueva Wednesday said the curriculum will be rolled out among its trainees and trainers under an agreement with the UNFPA, which gave a total of $89,083 grant. “Embedding the gender dimension is an initiative to empower women across societies,” he said.

In the Letter of Understanding (LoU), the partnership was formalized between the two agencies to implement the project component of the Joint Programme on Youth Employment and Migration (YEM) aiming to bring to technical vocational education and training (TVET) gender-sensitivity and life skills.

“We have opened a wider venue for women, making available variety of courses that they can enrol in, including those previously thought to be only for men. But much more needs to be done and we are continuously working on it,” Villanueva explained.

Villanueva represented the agency during the signing of the agreement held at the UNFPA office. Signing for the UNFPA was Ugochi Daniels, Country Office head.

Since late last year, TESDA has been a partner of the International Labour Organization (ILO) in the implementation of the Millennium Development Goals Achievement Fund (MDG-F) Joint Programme on Youth, Employment and Migration (YEM) entitled “Alternatives to Migration: Decent Jobs for Filipino Youth,” particularly for the conduct of labor market-responsive TVET for disadvantaged youths in four identified provinces – Antique, Masbate, Agusan Del Sur and Maguindanao.

Under the agreement, gender-sensitive modules and training material will be finalized, including training tools on sexually-transmitted infections and HIV/AIDS and roll-out the developed curriculum and materials in the Training of Trainers that will be conducted initially for the Trainers of TVET institutions in the four target provinces of the YEM project.

The modules, Villanueva said, will be submitted to the TESDA National GAD Council headed by former Senator Leticia Ramos Shahani for institutionalization into the TESDA curriculum.

“At least 20,000 technical vocational education and training trainers across the country are expected to benefit from the project once the materials are completely rolled-out,” Villanueva explained.

The first batch of trainers’ training will be held in Iloilo City from July 18 to 22 for the provinces of Masbate and Antique, according to Marta Hernandez, Executive Director of TESDA TVET Systems Development Office.

Villanueva said that TESDA’s Annual Work Plan (AWP) for the YEM project will have a total budget of $126,875. Of this, $34,581 will come from the UNFPA regular funds, $54,502 will be sourced from the Millennium Development Goals Achievement Fund, and $37,791 will come from TESDA as a counterpart fund for salary of personnel. “We have been taking strides in mainstreaming gender and development in the agency,” he added.

The TESDA chief said the UNFPA-TESDA partnership took off from the accomplishments of the Gender-Responsive Economic Actions for the Transformation of Women (GREAT) Project, where TESDA partnered with the Philippine Commission on Women and the Canadian International Cooperation Agency.

“The GREAT Women Project is a governance and capacity development project aiming to create and support a gender-responsive enabling environment for women’s economic empowerment, particularly those in micro-enterprises as well as in the program and service delivery systems for women entrepreneurs and their workers,” Villanueva explained.

The outputs of TESDA sub-project activity under the GREAT Women Project contribute to the country program outcomes/outputs of the Joint Programme on Youth, Employment and Migration (JP-YEM) through the integration of the gender and the life skills components to the TVET curriculum.

“Empowering our women through gender-sensitive education makes them informed, productive workers, yielding better economic and social benefits,” Villanueva said. “This is what TESDA’s goal at the end of the day — improved lives through skills education,” he added. –INA HERNANDO-MALIPOT, Manila Bulletin