Muslim Aid, with the backing of British Council Sri Lanka joined hands with the Vocational Training Authority (VTA) of Sri Lanka to launch the Youth Community Resilience Programme in the districts of Anuradhapura, Batticaloa and Trincomalee. As such Muslim Aid and the VTA entered into a MOU to implement the programme where selected youths from three vocational training centers in the three districts would be trained using the British Council Active Citizens framework. The programmes commenced in April 2019.

Muslim Aid have been partners with the British Council since 2013, where Muslim Aid are delivery partners for the Global Active Citizens (AC) programme where youth are trained and educated to take a lead role in resolving issues in their communities and villages. In Sri Lanka, the youth studying with the VTA are talented, skilled and eager to learn but often lack social competency and understanding of their communities. After rounds of discussion with the VTA, about how to fill this gap, Muslim Aid teamed up with the VTA to build their capacities by using the Active Citizens Training Framework and Toolkit. This however, has been carefully reviewed and then re-formulated by the VTA and Muslim Aid to complement the curriculum of the VTA.

The purpose of the collaboration and the programme, is for Muslim Aid and the VTA to use the British Council Active Citizens programme to train youth to be socially skilled and be able to establish social justice, community resilience and social cohesion in their regions. Muslim Aid has incorporated the Active Citizens programme into the Youth Community Resilience project whose main component will be focusing on Peace, Reconciliation and Social Justice as well as Strong Institutions. This falls into one of Muslim Aid’s areas of work which focuses on inclusiveness of peace and co-existence, keeping in line with the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) -16.

The project aims to reach a 100 or more young people, aged 18-29 years old, who are currently engaged in technical education, by providing social skills that are required to perform as an employee, entrepreneur and overall, as a citizen of the country. The programme hopes reach other Technical Education Institutes such as NAITA, Technical Colleges, National Youth Corps (NYC) to provide social skills to students who follow at least 6- month technical courses.