World Youth Skills Day was celebrated July 15 under the theme of “Skills for a Resilient Youth.”

Designated by the UN General Assembly in 2014, World Youth Skills Day aims to highlight the importance of equipping young people with skills for employment, decent work and entrepreneurship.
Rising youth unemployment is a growing global problem, with a report showing a worldwide rise since 2017 in the number of youth not in employment, education or training (NEET).

In 2016, there were 259 million young people classified as NEET – rising to an estimated 267 million in 2019, with 273 million projected by 2021. 
Globally, one in five young people are NEET – three out of four young NEETs are women.

While the youth population grew by 139 million between 1997 and 2017, the youth labour force shrank by 58.7 million.

Almost two out of five young workers in emerging and developing economies live on less than US$3.10 a day.

Prior to the current crisis, youth were three times as likely as people age 25 or older to be unemployed. Currently, more than one in six young people are out of work due to COVID-19. 

School closures due to COVID-19 may have impacted 70 percent of the world’s learners across education levels. 

Distance training has become the most common way of imparting skills, according to research collected by UNESCO, the International Labour Organization and the World Bank.  By Source: United Nations

• World Environment Day has been held every year on June 5 since 1974, and engages governments, businesses, celebrities and citizens in more than 100 countries
• The UN General Assembly established World Environment Day in 1972 at the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment
• The theme for this year’s World Environment Day is “Time for Nature, which focuses on biodiversity
• This year’s World Environment Day was hosted by Colombia, one of the most biodiverse countries on earth and home to more than 51,000 species
• World Environment Day has its own anthem. Called Earth Anthem, it was written by poet Abbay K
• Recent global events – from bushfires in Brazil, the United States and Australia to locust infestations across East Africa and the COVID-19 pandemic – have highlighted the importance of World Environment Day and the effects climate change is having on the environment
• Biodiversity involves 8 million plant and animal species, the ecosystems that house them and the genetic diversity among them
• In the past 150 years, the world’s live coral reef cover has been reduced by half
• Within the next decade, the UN has warned that one out of every four known species face being wiped off the planet
• According to the UN, it would take 1.6 earths to meet the demands that humans make on nature each year

Source: United Nations

1. World Bee Day, which was approved by the United Nations General Assembly in 2017, is held on May 20 each year to mark the birth of Anton Janša, a pioneer of modern apiculture, or beekeeping.
2. There are a variety of pollinator species in the world, which include bees, butterflies, birds and bats.
3. The most popular pollinator is the bee, which has between 25,000 and 30,000 species.
4. Nearly 90 per cent of all wild flowering plants depend on animal pollination.
5. Caring for bees and other pollinators is part of the fight against world hunger.
6. Ensuring biodiversity among pollinators is crucial to build resilience in agroecosystems and adapt to climate change.
7. Over 80 per cent of human food is supplied by plants. The loss of pollinators would, therefore, lead to an exponential loss of biodiversity, endangering our ecosystems and our diet.
8. Nearly three quarters of the world’s crops depend, at least in part, on bees and other pollinators.
9. In economic terms, natural pollinators contribute up to US$577 billion to the global economy.
10. The goal of World Bee Day is to strengthen measures aimed at protecting bees and other pollinators, which would significantly contribute to solving problems related to the global food supply and eliminate hunger in developing countries.

Sources: United Nations & the Food and Agriculture Organization