This World Youth Skills Day 2025, we celebrate the power of Bangladesh’s youth to fuel innovation and inclusive growth. Equipping them with skills means empowering a generation to build a sustainable, prosperous future for their communities and the nation.
While Swisscontact’s work in Bangladesh spans across diverse sectors including agriculture, ready-made garments, light engineering, health, water and sanitation, financial inclusion, and microinsurance, skills development has remained central to its interventions. By strengthening businesses, enterprises, and job markets, it continues to drive Bangladesh’s economic growth and empower its workforce.
Swisscontact’s engagement in skills development in Bangladesh began in 1970s with technical support to the Bangladesh Industrial Technical Assistance Centre (BITAC).
A more focused implementation portfolio emerged in 2010 with the launch of the Skills Development Project (SDP), co-funded by Asian Development Bank (ADB), Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and Government of Bangladesh (GoB). The project worked with the objective to enhance relevance of and access to technical and vocational education and training (TVET) programmes, and achieve improved capacity for good quality TVET delivery and delivery of relevant skills training. SDP tested new and improved approaches for private sector development and also focused on improving its policy, providing institutional and organisational strengthening, ensuring gender balance, and building capacity. It introduced competency-based training (CBT) and delivered skills training to thousands of TVET teachers.
SDP was followed by major flagship initiatives such as Skills for Unemployed and Underemployed Labour (SkillFUL) in 2011, and its subsequent phases of Building Skills for Unemployed and Underemployed Labour (B-SkillFUL) Phase I and II, in 2015-2020 and 2020–2024. The first two phases were funded by European Union and Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), while the ending phase was solely funded by SDC. SkillFUL and B-SkillFUL facilitated trainings in demand driven skills and placed more than 70% of the trained women and men in gainful employment. This ensured access to the labour market for the unemployed labourers and provided higher employment opportunities for the underemployed ones. The programme also worked towards improving workplace conditions by increasing awareness of enterprise owners about the inherent benefits of a decent work environment. Special attention was paid to women (who are 55% of the total target population), ethnic and religious minority groups and people with disabilities. The last phase was designed to improve productivity and competitiveness of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and create better jobs by providing Business Development Services (BDS), and also worked towards improving workplace conditions. The programme facilitated the implementation of training programs through local training service providers (TSPs).
Skills and Employment Programme in Bangladesh (SUDOKKHO) (2014–2021) funded by Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and Department for International Development (DFID), helped over 71,000 young people in 6 years to get work in the Ready Made Garment (RMG) sector and construction sectors. Sudokkho tested two models of training delivered by the private sector. The first was delivered by commercial training institutions, known as Private Training Providers (PTPs), and the second was delivered directly by employers in the workplace, known as Industry Based Training (IBT). Industry Based Training with the RMG sector proved to be particularly successful and has been implemented in 194 factories across Bangladesh. Rather than directly subsidising in-house training, Sudokkho offered Technical Assistance to support RMG industries for establishing training model with the potential to expand without direct project support. Industry partners covered all direct costs of training. The IBT model was effective and efficient in-factory training system with better and faster training for skilling of unskilled SMOs, up-skilling of low performers and development of multi-skilled operators. According to Sakhawat Hossain Khan, Deputy General Manager at Far East Knitting and Dyeing Industries, employees trained by Sudokkho added productivity to their operations.
Achieving Sustainability Towards Healthcare Access (ASTHA) (2011-2016), Uttoron (2016–2023), Sustainable and Meaningful Intervention for Livelihood Enrichment (SMILE) (2023-2027) and Sarathi (2016-2024) are on the other hand funded by the private sector. ASTHA is financed by Novartis, the Evi Diethelm Winteler Stiftung, Happel Foundation and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), trains young adults (60% women to become qualified healthcare professionals. Through this process, the project not only contributes to the development and expansion of a sustainable and high-quality healthcare system in rural areas, but also directly addresses underemployment and unemployment among many young people in Bangladesh.
Uttoron - Skills for better life, was a skills development project implemented by Swisscontact with funding from Chevron. The project supported youths by providing training on trades that matched the current industry demand. Uttoron’s training consisted of 300 hours of in-class training followed by job placement support. In 2021 Uttoron signed a partnership with Sylhet City Corporation (SCC) to establish a permanent training centre that will be operated by SCC and create easy access to vocational training for disadvantaged youth.
SMILE, also funded by Chevron, focuses on Capacity Building among it’s other key interventions, and is committed to empowering local youth by offering skill development opportunities and promoting self-employment in promising industries.
Sarathi - Progress Through Improved Financial Health, was funded by the MetLife Foundation and Happel Foundation, focused on facilitating the upskilling of low-skilled RMG workers, especially women, in partnership with the Bangladesh Knitwear Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BKMEA) and international fashion brands, and supported access to entrepreneurship training, incubation services and loans to aspiring women entrepreneurs, among its other key interventions.
In addition, targeted initiatives for green transitioning of the ready-made garments (RMG) sector such as, PROGRESS (Promoting Green Growth in the RMG Sector through Skills), BYETS (Building Youth Employability through Skills), and InSPIRE (Initiative to Stimulate Private Investment for Resource Efficiency) focus on green skilling and upskilling, specially for women workers. They support factories in implementing in-house training to enhance technical skills, particularly for women workers, enabling promotions and job security. And also provide support to establish adaptive, demand-driven upskilling systems to support workers' transition into green and sustainable roles.
Skills development has been a component of nearly all of Swisscontact’s projects, from the early days of Katalyst to the recently launched SAFE BD. With Bangladesh’s large youth population and a significant number of NEET (Not in Education, Employment, or Training) youth, both in the urban and rural areas, skills development remains a cross-cutting priority across Swisscontact’s portfolio.