DAVAO CITY (PIA) – The first National Youth Development Alliance Summit 2023 to be held at Dusit Thani Hotel in Davao City February 22-23, 2023, is expected to convene around 250 youth development participants from across 15 cities in the country.
Rone Victor Dela Cruz, team leader of the Youth Development – Davao Hub team leader of USAID Opportunity 2.0 Project, said that the summit aims to present the accomplishments of the project and to strengthen its engagement with the out-of-school youths (OSY).
Dela Cruz has hoped that the summit will yield fruitful outcomes and output that will provide the OSYs with better opportunities in education, livelihood and entrepreneurship, employment, and civic engagement.
“This is to celebrate the wins and gains of the program together with the youth development alliances, and to also learn from each other what are the best practices that have been done to ensure that OSY are able to access these opportunities,” he said during his guesting at the Kapehan sa Dabaw at SM City Davao on Monday (February 20).
Bannering the theme “Stronger Together: Driving Beyond Convergence,” Dela Cruz shared that the summit also aims to intensify its alliances and collaborations with the local government units, private sectors, and other government agencies like Department of Education, Technical Education and Skills Development, Department of Agriculture, Department of Trade and Industry, and Public Employment Service Office.
The summit also intends to encourage stakeholders especially in the local level, and to initiate plans to help the OSYs have better access to education, livelihood programs, employment, and civic engagement.
Dela Cruz said that Davao City Mayor Sebastian Duterte is expected to attend and share the plans for the Davao OSYs and the provisions in the Executive Order that the latter has issued mandating the establishment of the Davao City Alliance for Out-of-school Youth Development Council which the Mayor himself chairs.
The USAID Opportunity 2.0 Program is a USAID-funded youth development program founded in 2020 during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, that aims to empower OSY Filipinos by providing them the opportunities in education, livelihood and entrepreneurship, employment, and civic involvement. (PIA-XI/Anton Oblianda)
