It’s World Youth Skills Day, and we proudly highlight key initiatives at ICAO to enable Member States enhance compliance and better optimize the socio-economic benefits that aviation’s connectivity offers.
Our Global Aviation Training Office (GAT) Office boosts aviation training and capacity requirements of Member States through the wide range of courses it offers. These support mechanisms are built on a strategy that seeks to provide the most critical human resource needs of Member States in order to ensure that the global air transport network is sustainably managed by competent personnel.
Through ICAO’s No Country Left Behind (NCLB) initiative, we work to ensure that all States have the opportunity to enhance their compliance with ICAO Standards and Recommended Practices (SARPs), as ICAO compliance is a prerequisite for accessing international air connectivity and all the socio-economic development opportunities it offers. An important aspect of these efforts is helping our States to develop the skilled human resources they need to ensure the sustainability of the growth of their aviation sectors.
In fact, the ICAO Next Generation of Aviation Professionals (NGAP) initiative has been developed to attract, educate, train and retain the best and the brightest that our coming generations have to offer to manage the growth of the global air transport network. Through NGAP, we host Model ICAO Forums for high school, college, and university-level students from all 192 Member States of ICAO. Participants study global aviation’s challenges and, through a Case Study competition, propose solutions to a panel of industry experts on emerging topics such as: Socio-economic Benefits of Air Transport; Capacity-building and Aviation Security; Unmanned Aircraft Systems; and Dangerous Cargo; to name just a few.
In regard to ICAO itself, the Young Aviation Professionals Programme (YAPP), a special development programme dedicated to the next generation of aviation professionals, is one of our most sought after initiatives. Led by ICAO in conjunction with the International Air Transport Association (IATA) and Airports Council International (ACI), YAPP provides live-changing skills for participants.
As a UN agency, we remain committed to putting young people at the centre of the priorities of our Organization and our global aviation community as a whole, and to ensuring that tomorrow’s leaders receive all the support they can get today.
