Integration across technical areas is essential for supporting long-term and sustainable employment outcomes. This supports the multidimensional and intersecting needs of the target group in advancing toward self-reliance.

Here are some examples of how integration took place within the PROSPECTS programme regarding Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL):

• Skills profiling tools can be integrated into employment services to better access rural and refugee hosting areas. This was done in Uganda via mobile caravans for RPL candidates in rural areas that were remote from RPL assessment centres.

• Skills profiling can also help identify skill sets among jobseekers who are better suited to entrepreneurship than waged employment. Referrals can be made to business development services, such as Start and Improve Your Business (SIYB) training.

• There are clear links between Employment Intensive Investment Programmes (EIIP) and skills profiling, where TVET training institutions play a role in developing the skills of workers to build and maintain infrastructure work. For the purpose of skills recognition, where courses end in formal certification of skills, this can help EIIP workers transition into longer-term work in the construction sector. For instance, in Kenya, PROSPECTS partnered with the Vocational Training Centre and Department of Public Works in Lodwar to establish a cobblestone production training course, targeting young people who participated in EIIP. In Uganda, EIIP was used to construct multi-purpose community centres inside refugee settlements, which provided employment services to the settlement’s residents.

• Skills recognition processes emphasize that learning happens in a wide variety of contexts and situations. These include formal learning, often in a recognized institution and which is designed to produce specific learning outcomes and lead to a nationally recognized certification. They also include non-formal learning, which is intentional learning but often not certified, such as short training courses undertaken in the workplace, apprenticeships in the informal economy, or short courses offered by civil society organizations and other actors. They can also encompass informal or experiential learning, which occurs through work experience. RPL assessment and certification are conducted according to occupational, qualification, or industry standards that reflect the competencies required for a given profession at a certain level.

• RPL training can also be used to provide information on labour rights, including occupational safety and health, that is targeted to the profession and occupation that the candidate is pursuing. Though this is not standard to RPL, the PROSPECTS-supported training course launched prior to RPL assessments often introduced modules on labour law and occupational safety and health (OSH).

• Cooperative representatives can help collect information about job vacancies among their members.