IDB supports program to develop the skills of the 21st century of the Colombian youth

A $50 million project will finance a program for Colombian adolescents and youth to develop the necessary skills to formulate and promote their life projects and become agents of social and economic change.

The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) approved a project for $50 million that will be destined to support Colombian adolescents and young people in developing the 21st century skills. The program will promote the strengthening and institutional articulation for the consolidation of public policies for youth, and will also implement the Sacúdete strategy, as a national program through which adolescents and young people will be able to develop these skills to formulate and successfully promote their life projects.

Despite its progress, in Colombia there are still challenges in educational access that affect adolescents and young people to a great extent. From the inequities in access to secondary education to the high level of dropouts at this level, only a third of Colombians who graduate from high school immediately transition to higher education in the country.

In addition, young people who complete secondary education have cognitive deficiencies as well as lack of 21st century skills. Thus, one in seven 15-year-old students has difficulties to solve problems collaboratively according to the PISA test, a gap that increases even more in low-income youth.

To face these challenges and provide them with tools that allow adolescents and young people to improve their performance, the project will have three components. The first component will be focused on articulating the national and territorial youth policy, with which it hopes to have greater inter-institutional coordination, efficient resource management, and results monitoring. The second component will support the design and implementation of the Sacúdete program, which will use training methodologies aligned with the youth policy and strategy. The third component will be aimed at adapting the infrastructure and provision of Sacúdete centers, where this methodology will be applied.

With this project it is expected to obtain an improvement in the transversal skills of the country's adolescents and young people and to improve the graduation rates from secondary education. In addition to this, it is expected that the Sacúdete program will benefit 168,000 adolescents and young people, and 4,000 individual and social enterprises, with which they hope to create at least 40 strategic alliances to generate more opportunities for employability and entrepreneurship for young people.