Development Blogs.com

Education is the backbone of any modern, competitive society. In this Feature Service article, Manilka W. Leanage, 3rd place winner in CIPE’s 2007 Youth Essay Contest in the category of ‘Education Reform and Employment,’ talks about the need to make Sri Lanka’s education system more responsive to the needs of students and the market. Despite very high literacy rate and free education up to the tertiary level, young Sri Lankans find themselves unprepared for the challenges of a modern workplace. Many are unable to pass highly selective university entrance exams; and even those who complete their university education often lack the skills and entrepreneurial drive to succeed professionally. Leanage highlights the problem of youth unemployment among the educated: “I personally...

This week, the world is celebrating the Global Entrepreneurship Week. As the organizers are putting it: For one week, millions of young people around the world will join a growing movement of entrepreneurial people to generate new ideas and to seek better ways of doing things. Dozens of countries are coming together for the first time to host Global Entrepreneurship Week, an initiative to inspire young people to embrace innovation, imagination and creativity. To think big. To turn their ideas into reality. To make their mark. There are a ton of ideas circulated already - or thousands to be exact - among hundreds of organizations and individuals from nearly 60 countries.  And not just ideas - but concrete projects and activities.  There are things like the Global Innovation...

The Iraqi government is growing in size, steadily moving towards pre-2003 levels, according to this NY Times piece by Campbell Robertson.  Not only the growth in the size of the government is putting pressures on the budget, it is also a sign of another worrisome trend - the inability of the private sector to generate jobs and provide opportunities outside of the public sector. One interesting stat: In 2006, 31 percent of Iraq’s labor force was working in the public sector, according to the agency for statistics in the Ministry of Planning. The agency expects that figure to reach 35 percent this year, about 5 percentage points short of where the C.I.A. estimated it to be on the eve of the 2003 invasion.   As the article puts it, the problems of private sector growth and job creation...

Bhutan, a small country wedged between China and India, has made great strides over the past 45 years toward transforming itself from an isolated kingdom into a fledgling modern democracy. The country has progressed in terms of economic and political development, but one significant area still lagging behind is the education system. In his Feature Service article, Kinley Rinchen, Planning Officer in the Office of the Vice Chancellor at the Royal University of Bhutan and an honorable mention winner in CIPE’s youth essay competition, traces the development of Bhutan’s education system and analyzes its current challenges. He emphasizes that more reforms are necessary to make the country’s education system able to better meet the needs of students and employers. As the Bhutanese economy...

In February, CIPE launched an essay competition, which asked young people aged 18-30 to share their ideas about citizenship, democratic and market-oriented reform, and youth leadership. In response, CIPE received 445 essays from 72 countries! CIPE is now pleased to announce the winners! Although we originally planned to name nine winners, the essays were so great that the judges (CIPE partners from think tanks around the world, as well as some CIPE staff) chose 16. Essay competition winners came from all over the world - take a look at the map below! An equal number of males and females participated, and the most popular category was Educational Reform and Employment Opportunities. Participants from Indonesia sent in the highest percentage of essays (12%), and regionally, Africa was...

Presenting a searchable jobs database for interested...

Presenting a searchable jobs database for interested...