WFD Committee Meeting

13 WFD Committee members and AmCham Executive Team were present at the meeting. Among the special guests were Ms. Viktorya Aydinyan and Ms. Haykuhi Gevorgyan from the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs. The meeting was chaired by Mr. Dagen Valentine.

The participants discussed the Committee’s restructuring issues and decided on electing the Co-Chair of the Committee on an online platform.

The already launched paid-internship initiative of the Committee was decided to continue and develop, and new projects to launch if need be.

Mr. Sevak Hovhannisyan of Civitta talked about Armenia Workforce development Activity 5-year program supported by the USAID focused on young people and people with disabilities to find effective employment in the labor market.

The members represented their concerns and thoughts on the issue and the stage was given to the Advisor to the Deputy Minister of the MLSA, Ms. Viktorya Aydinyan, who thoroughly introduced the workforce development strategy to members. She mentioned the 4 main objectives of it and the steps planned to undertake in that regard:

-Prevention of unemployment, through focusing on youth.

-Reduction of unemployment, in regard to long-term unemployment.

-The impact assessment.

-Increasing the coverage of the labor force.

As a sum up, it was decided to convert the discussion either into a written suggestions format or conduct a further discussion after having the project ready to discuss.