Shaping the Future: World Youth Skills Day 2024 in Somalia

In July 2024 Somalia commemorated World Youth Skills Day under a theme of strengthening youth agency, skills and employment. Veynuus was engaged to provide strategic guidance, coordination support and post-event reporting for the Ministry of Youth and Sports, with financial support from IOM and with the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs also taking part. The work ran from programme design through speaker curation and youth dialogue facilitation to a final report carrying observations, gaps and policy recommendations.

Commemorative days have a tendency to become ceremonial. Speeches are given, the theme is read out, photographs are taken and the occasion closes without anything having been decided or recorded. With millions of Somali young people facing uncertain job prospects, the commemoration had to function as a platform for actual discussion of employment, training and inclusion rather than as an annual observance.

That ambition ran into a coordination problem. The day involved multiple government ministries, international agencies, youth organisations and private sector participants, each with its own institutional interest in the subject and its own view of what the event should achieve. Ministries work to mandates that overlap imperfectly; agencies work to programme cycles; youth organisations arrive with immediate and specific concerns. Building a single programme across all of them required the differences to be worked through in advance rather than discovered on the day.

There was also the substantive difficulty of the topic itself. Youth employment in Somalia is not a problem with a single owner. It touches education, labour policy, private sector demand, informal training and the movement of young people between rural and urban areas. An event that stayed at the level of general concern would have been comfortable and useless; one that reached specifics needed participants prepared to discuss them in public.

Veynuus designed a programme structure aligned with global Youth Skills Day priorities and grounded in the Somali context. That combination is deliberate. The international framing gives partners a recognisable reference point and connects the day to commitments already made elsewhere; the local grounding is what stops the programme from discussing a youth employment problem that belongs to another country.

The team facilitated the inclusion of youth representatives and development partners in the programme itself rather than in the audience. Where young people are placed on the agenda determines how much of what they say is heard: contributions scheduled at the end, after officials have left, are a form of participation that changes nothing. Sessions were built so that young people could set out their concerns and their proposed solutions directly, with the relevant institutions still in the room.

Speakers and facilitators were identified and secured with balance of perspective as the selection criterion. A panel on youth employment composed entirely of officials produces a description of policy; one composed entirely of young people produces a description of frustration. The value is in the exchange between them, which requires both sides to be present and briefed on what the session is meant to establish.

Reporting was designed before the event rather than commissioned after it. Knowing in advance what the final report needed to capture shaped how sessions were structured and how discussion was recorded, so that the eventual document could set out observations, gaps and recommendations grounded in what was actually said rather than in a general summary of the day.

Programme design produced the structure for the day and the rationale behind it. Stakeholder coordination brought together two government ministries, the supporting international agency, youth organisations and private sector participants, with more than five sector groups represented and over two hundred young people engaged across the programme.

Speaker curation meant identifying contributors, securing their participation and briefing them so each session had a purpose its panel understood. Youth dialogue facilitation covered the curated panels and question and answer sessions where young people set out their challenges, aspirations and ideas for skills development. Facilitation here is largely a matter of protecting the format: keeping the participatory sessions at their allotted length when the day runs behind, and ensuring questions are answered rather than acknowledged.

The final policy report was compiled from the day's discussions, setting out what was raised, where the gaps lay and what the participants proposed. It was written to be usable by the ministries as an input to planning rather than as a record of proceedings, which is a different document with a different structure.

The event brought together private sector participants, international NGOs, government officials and youth-led organisations. Through curated panels and question and answer sessions, young people shared their challenges, aspirations and ideas for skills development directly. Two government ministries were partnered with, one international agency supported the work, more than two hundred youth participants were engaged across more than five sector groups, and one final policy report was delivered.

The presence of the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs aligned the day with employment and training strategy rather than leaving it within a youth affairs remit alone, which matters for whether anything discussed can be taken forward. The insights gathered informed a set of recommendations now being used to develop future youth events and skills strategies.

Human capital work in a government context often turns on whether a discussion is captured in a form an institution can act on. The programme design and the facilitation mattered on the day; the report is what allowed the day to have consequences after it. Veynuus's role in engagements of this kind concentrates on those two ends.

It also shows the practical benefit of getting more than one ministry into the same event. Youth employment sits across mandates, and a commemoration hosted by a single ministry tends to produce recommendations that only that ministry can act on. Bringing labour and youth portfolios into the same discussion widened the range of what could realistically follow.

• Programme design
• Stakeholder coordination
• Speaker curation
• Youth dialogue facilitation
• Policy report