HÀ NỘI — The Việt Nam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) and Microsoft yesterday launched the M-Powered e-portal in Hà Nội, to provide youngsters with opportunities to learn technical and soft skills.

A part of the Microsoft YouthSpark programme, the portal is powered by MS public cloud and will also give access to job listings. It will have Microsoft and its partner-created content in Vietnamese. The online training can be supplemented with real-time mentoring.

The unemployment rate in the country is at an average of 6.83 per cent among young people (15 to 24 years) and at 2.27 per cent (for those of working age), as per the labour and employment data for the first six months of 2016, released by the General Department of Statistics.

This shows that young people find it far more difficult to find jobs than people of working age. To understand the high level of unemployment among youngsters, the USAID conducted a baseline survey in 2015. Its report indicated that a majority of the graduates cannot fulfil the demands of employers because they lack necessary skills to perform the job. Computing skills and English were identified as critical soft skills needed for the workplace.

M-Powered aims to help young people strengthen their skills as well as help businesses find suitable employees and reduce the cost of training new people.

Dr Astrid Tuminez, Microsoft’s regional director of legal and corporate affairs in Southeast Asia, said: “Microsoft strives to empower Việt Nam’s digital generation and support the development of the country’s economy through our YouthSpark programme. M-Powered online portal will be an interface that connects young people with career, mentoring and learning opportunities. The portal is built on Microsoft cloud computing platform using user-friendly Vietnamese language so that youngsters can easily access the resources provided to capture better opportunities for life.” — VNS