Overall Objective and Programme Purpose
The Sino-Italian Development Cooperation’s Vocational Training Programme is a bilateral initiative funded by the Government of the People’s Republic of China and the Italian Government.
The Programme’s goals are to enable poverty reduction and contribute to the economic development of Sichuan and Shaanxi Provinces in accordance with national poverty reduction strategies.
Financed by the Italian Government with a grant of 15 million Euro and a soft loan of 23 million Euro that are shared between the two provinces and directly transferred to the Chinese government in separate tranches, the Programme aims at sustaining employability by fostering the Vocational Training system reform and by promoting equitable and efficient employment services via a cross-sectoral approach.

Problems addressed
In the last decade national policies have been committed to develop a modern Vocational Training sector able to meet the demand of the rising private sector industry. Reform of China’s Vocational Education and Training system has been pointed out as a key sector in the prevention and reduction of urban and rural poverty.
Financial investment shortage, defectiveness of system investment, lack of knowledge on school management, decrease of student’s enrolment are major constraints connected to the sector.
The Sichuan and Shaanxi Provinces are facing the same crucial obstacles and require a demand driven Vocational Training system more positively connected with the related employment service.
At the same time, mainly due to the process of State Owned Enterprises reform, the unemployment rate has grown constantly, requiring an employment service able to provide job-placement and retraining services to positively absorb the exceeding labour surplus.
At this stage, limited resources and capacity to undertake survey aimed at identifying skills in demand by the labour market and to adapt training programmes accordingly, along with lack of integrated job placement systems represent the major obstacles faced by Labour and Social Security Bureaus in western regions.

Programme Focus
Committed to foster the Vocational Training system reform and the employment services reform, the Vocational Training Programme is focused on fourteen pilot schools and two Job Carreer Centres in Sichuan and Shaanxi Provinces.

Ownership
The Vocational Training Programme, in line with OECD/DAC poverty reduction strategies, aims at supporting Chinese government to take leadership and ownership of its own development process and to develop partnership capacity of translating poverty reduction objectives into more effective programmes.