India Becomes the 48th Member of WorldSkills International

For the past several years India has been observing WorldSkills International to see if they could find a way to join. Towards the end of 2006, India submitted an Application for Membership with WorldSkills International and at the recent Executive Board Meeting in Bangalore, India, they were accepted as a Member of WorldSkills International. 

The organisation that will be the official Member is called Confederation of Indian Industry (CII). According to their application, “CII works to create and sustain an environment conducive to the growth of industry in India, partnering industry and government alike through advisory and consultative processes. CII is a non-governmental, not-for-profit, industry led and industry-managed organisation, playing a proactive role in India’s development process. Founded over 111 years ago, it is India’s premier business association, with a direct membership of over 6300 organisations form the private as well as public sectors and an indirect membership of over 90,000 companies from around 336 national and regional sectoral associations.”

In a speech to the Skills Summit in January 2007 in Bangalore, India Tjerk Dusseldorp, President of WorldSkills International said “While India maybe WorldSkills 48th member; by size of its population alone, India more than doubles the potential of our global mission to reach young people everywhere. And I understand that since 1998,  CII has been directly involved in the management of the government lead Industrial Training Institutes and now chairs 51 of the initial  84 Institute upgrades to centres of excellence.  Among the great challenges and opportunities facing India, I think the CII initiative to “skill a million Indians”, by recognising the skills acquired in the informal sector of society, is a visionary goal which could benefit from linking up with India’s pre-eminence in media skills.” 

Please join us in welcoming India to WorldSkills International. We look forward to seeing them at the 38th WorldSkills Competition in Japan in November 2007.

For more information: http://www.ciionline.org/

Click here to download Tjerk Dusseldorp's full speech to the Skills Summit..

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