Catching the WorldSkills fever
I was invited to be a part of the facilitator team for this year’s WorldSkills Youth Forum (WSYF). I study and work with groups and group dynamics so I was really exited to go. I was looking forward to a challenge strengthening my professional competency. I never thought the experience would affect me the way it did!
I was asked as an outsider to be part of the WSYF 2010 to ensure that the product, a viral campaign for the WorldSkills movement, wouldn’t be influenced by anyone besides the WSYF participants themselves. We wanted the campaign to convey their point of view and I think we achieved just that. You can see for yourself on www.worldskillsyouthforum.com.
Especially meeting the WSYF participants had a great impact on me. When you talk to people who are that passionate about what they do, you can listen for hours, and I had loads of interesting conversations during our time together.
I really feel lucky and privileged to have been given the opportunity to get to know and work with such passionate people. As a process facilitator, you can’t ask for a more engaged crowd and the energy level throughout the week was amazing. Everyone worked hard and was more than happy to do so – even throughout the night before the big presentation at the General Assembly where we were working until 2 am.
It was that passion that struck me the most and everyone I met shared it. The members of the Board, the Secretariat, the Delegates – they’ve all got the WS fever. And as it turns out that fever is highly contagious.
I am curious to see if there are more people like me out there. New to the WorldSkills movement, having already caught the fever? Why is it that WorldSkills means so much to so many people?
Because you can see it changing peoples lives for the better before your very eyes.
WorldSkills and SkillsDenmark mean so much to me because I would like to see some more respect and prestige connected to possesing skills. Skills is after all what built our world as we know it, and what is needed to keep it going.
My goal is that vocational education and training should be a first choice for more young people, and that they should be proud of what they can do with their hands and brains in unison.
When we analyse the competencies of our young competitors they have a thorough in-depth knowledge about their skill, both processes, materials and tools, and they can adapt that knowledge to new and unknown challenges. That’s also what we praise the young academics for. They have similar competencies. It just a different approach to learning, one from practice the other from theory, but should the recognition not be equal? I believe so….and that is why we are passionate about WorldSkills.