Housing Finance Foundation (HFF) has partnered with regional volunteerism federation,VSO Jitolee in facilitating to fix skills gap in Kenya’s construction sector.
The project aims at boosting competence of unskilled artisans in the country by offering students career counseling, mentorship-it will also provide holistic learning experience for Technical Training in soci0-economic development.
Under the Agreement, HFF and VSO Jitolee will work towards building instructor and student capacity in Technical, Vocational Education and Training.
Housing Finance Foundation, Executive Director, Winnie Kathurima Imanyara said the building and construction sector contributes three percent every year for the last 5 years of all informal jobs in Kenya and is a key employment opportunity for the youth.
Despite being a critical supplier of jobs, the industry is faced with significant skills shortage with only 25 percent of workers formally trained.
The partnership will help the Foundation fulfill its mandate of upgrading the technical capability of artisans who find it difficult to adjust in a very difficult and fast changing job market.
“Housing Finance Foundation will work closely with VSO Jitolee as a partner of choice to support access to quality inclusive education and 21st century skills for youth recognizing the Government’s demands to achieve Vision 2030 social pillar objectives,” said. Imanyara.
VSO Jitolee’s Executive Director Ben Ngutu said the organization will map potential resource and funding partners for the project.
“VSO Jitolee will work with HFF to lobby key stakeholders as well as link Technical and Vocational and Educational Training (TVET) in Kenya to international partners and donors and develop and implement programmes that improve the quality, relevance, equity training and access to vocational training,” said Ngutu.