The Autonomous Region of the Azores will host the National Skills Championship in 2011.
The information was provided by the Regional Director of Labour, Vocational Training and Consumer Defence today.
The National Skills Championship will take place at the “Portas do Mar” on São Miguel in the first two weeks of April 2011, an event that aims to encourage youngsters to obtain a professional qualification that favours, on the one hand, their social and professional fulfilment and, on the other hand, enhances vocational training as alternative for a successful integration in the labour market.
This is a “large-scale” initiative that requires, according to Rui Bettencourt, “a great logistic component” for their organisation.
“It will be necessary to carry heavy equipment through maritime transport. We will need to organise the logistics with regard to restaurants, hotels and, above all, space organisation. The Organising Committee of the National Skills Championship is currently in the Azores to become acquainted with the spaces, to organise the event details and to assess our logistical capacity to absorb this entire organisation and we are already preparing it,” added the Regional Director.
For Rui Bettencourt, this organisation is of “fundamental for the strategy to disseminate the importance of professions and of professionalism in the Azores. We would like that this professionalism was recognized, accepted and regarded as a very important strategy for our development.”
The Azorean application for the Forum was formalised in March, 2009 by the regional secretary of Labour and Social Solidarity among the organising entity during the National skills Championship held in Santarém.
One should remind that the Azores were the first region, at a world level, to put for competition under the Skills Championships the job: “Hygiene and Work Safety Technician.”
Moreover, the Azores have been distinguished with important awards at various skills championships organised at a national, global and European level.
The first International Skills Championship was held in Madrid in 1950 and was contested between Portugal and Spain, gathering 24 competitors, 12 from each country, distributed among 12 occupations.