Rural Distress

This session highlights the imbalance in rural–urban development and its significant negative impacts on national economic growth, rural employment, food security and nutrition, and urbanization. Good examples of rural revitalization will show that well-developed rural areas can play a vital role in wider economic development and generating good jobs for the youth. Specific recommendations regarding green and blue investments were discussed.

Farming Crisis

This session describes the current key challenges of farming and proposes transformative changes in policies and approaches for making farming profitable and gender-friendly, highly productive, and attractive to the youth in the region.

Oliver Chapman

Oliver’s work focuses on youth engagement and youth employment through ADB’s youth initiative, Youth for Asia, and also on Civil Society Participation. He also supports some of ADB’s work on citizen-led approaches to governance, including from the perspective of encouraging active citizenship in youth. Oliver is seconded from the NGO Plan International and before joining ADB he worked for this NGO on roles covering organizational development and governance; international development funding; financial performance management; and partnership relations.

The Role of Private Sector in Human Capital and Skill Development in Thailand

Challenges in Thailand’s education sector include skills mismatch and employers’ low satisfaction with workers’ skills. The country’s dual vocational program has seen slow progress partly because of the risk of free riding and difficulty in redeeming tax deduction. The presenter recommends establishing an intermediary agency that will manage the program’s transaction costs.

Boonwara Sumano Chenphuengpawn

Boonwara Sumano Chenphuengpawn is Research Fellow Sectoral Economics Program (SEP) at the Thailand Development Research Institute. Some of her recent publication were Human Rights are becoming part of Trade Standard (12 October 2016); Let’s Demand more from Donations (10 Agusut 2016); Plugging the Public Information gap on the AEC (9 December 2015) and Panel Report Diffusion and the Future of EU-ASEAN Economic Relations. She holds a Doctor of Philosophy from the Queen of Mary, University of London, United Kingdom.

Vocational Training and Labor Market Transition: A Randomized Experiment among Cambodian Disadvantaged Young Adults

In Cambodia, a trial provided two-month training in housekeeping, with incentives, to low-income young adults in Phnom Penh. The program found that training had no effects on employment outcomes, and it was not enough for disadvantaged youth to break into the labor market.