Connecting Rural Youth to Employment Information:An iCamp Prototyping Event

InSTEDD iLab Southeast AsiaJuly 27th, 2017 - National Employment Agency Phnom Penh

In July 2017, the InSTEDD iLab Southeast Asia team organized an iCamp at The National Employment Agency in Phnom Penh. The day’s focus was on how to help youth in rural areas have better access to employment

information. Participants from nine institutions from government and NGOs, collaborated together.

A full list of participating organizations:

Ministry of Education Youth and SportsThe National Employment Agency

InSTEDD iLab SEAKampuchea Action for Primary Education (KAPE)

Habitat for HumanityYouth Council of Cambodia (YCC)

BBC Media ActionWorld Vision Cambodia

Friend International Freelance Consultant for SPIDER project

Student from Royal University of Phnom Penh

Five challenges to rural youth employment access were raised by participants:

1. How to help youth receive employment information (NEA)

2. How to help youth build their own start-up small scale business (MoEYS)

3. How to help youth to understand about processes and requirements to work abroad (MoEYS)

4. How to help youth on soft and hard skills to match the current job market (KAPE & BBC)

5. How to encourage youth to participate in community volunteer work (MoEYS)

Three challenges were voted by participants for further discussing, brainstorming and prototyping:

1. How to help youth receive employment information.

2. How to help youth with soft and hard skills to match the current job market.

3. How to help youth to understand the processes and requirements to work abroad.

Understanding the Problem

The participants were divided into three groups to better understand the

problems associated with the selected challenges:

How can we improve communications to rural youth?

How can we improve the soft and hard skills of rural youth?

How can we provide information on the requirements for working abroad

to rural youth?

Creating and Validating Potential Prototypes

Once the groups brainstormed, debated, and sketched out their prototype visions, they then shared their ideas with the rest of the groups, received additional feedback, and landed on three design prototypes.

The Three Design Prototypes

1. How do we help rural youth receive employment information?Provide job seekers with free access to employment information from the National Employment Agency via a hotline. Enable youth to register to NEA to receive relevant updates via phone calls.

2. How do we help rural youth with soft and hard skills to match the current job market?To respond to this challenge, the team came up with an e-counselling mobile application which contains contents of soft skills and hard skills. With the application, students can complete a self assessment and the application will provide suggestions on the field that matches their strong skills.

3. How do we help rural youth to understand the processes and requirements to work abroad?To help the migrant workers receive information about the migration process, risks and costs, the team proposed an information hotline.This hotline will contain all public services and embassy contacts for migration workers to contact before they go to another country for work.

At the end of the day, the iCamp reached its goal of three design prototypes from the initially defined five challenges. The InSTEDD iLab, along with the leading organization of each of the three prototypes, will continue

to progress the development of these proposed solutions.

Another successful iCamp brings another opportunity to form new relationships, and new partnerships. iCamp events are just one example of how the iLab Southeast Asia is

connecting subject matter experts, designers, and programmers on a local level.

To stay updated on iCamp events, visit ilabsea.org.

Special thanks to

To learn more about The iLab Southeast Asia

please visit:

www.ilabsoutheastasia.org

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