Thematic areas: ITC, employment,
Country: Egypt
Egypt ICT Trust Fund (ICT-TF) in cooperation with the Japanese Government initiated the “Youth Employment Generation Program in Egypt” started in April 1, 2012 to June 30, 2013. The program addressed the mismatch between the skills demanded by the private sector and youth skills to provide youth with the necessary vocational, IT and soft skills to increase their employment prospects.
The solution consists of the following two main components:
- The MSMEs (Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises) component aims to increase the effectiveness and improve the profitability of 1500 MSMEs owners and entrepreneurs through the integration of ICT in their business operation, through two main techniques:
- Direct MSMEs: here the program conducts awareness sessions, train of trainers and builds the capacities of MSMEs;
- Indirect MSMEs: here the program builds the capacities of MSMEs through SMEs self-learning toolkits.
This component is based on holding a competition on the best social entrepreneurship ideas to successfully implement their projects… And, it includes networking and mentorship services, providing TOTs to ICT-TF trainers to provide this training later.
- The vocational Training and the Internship component helps young people by setting up a mechanism to connect private sector companies with young men and women to increase their chances to access internship opportunities and join the job market. The program starts with a labor market survey in each governorate to determine the targeted jobs and train both partners; a study of “Marketing Demand Analysis” was conducted at the national level.
The project implementation cycle went through the following phases:
- Needs assessment- 1st quarter: Identify the needs of the rural communities and the important role of the local active NGOs, grassroots leaders in lives of common people synthesizing and aggregating positive and negative learning
- Initiation and Building PPP Partnership – 2nd quarter: Update action and communication plans, acquire needed resources and establish a Public Private Partnership and organize of all partners to design solutions considering challenges and potentials that facing turn the results into a real project with applicable implementation plan.
- Implementation- 2nd – 4th quarter: Develop the implementation plan.
- M & E –1st – 5th quarter: Keep monitoring and evaluation of the progress, and documentation of the project.
- Sustainability and dissemination- last quarter: Disseminate the program findings and recommendations among stakeholders and sustaining the project by scaling it up.
At the outcome level, 60% of MSMEs trainees, who were trained face-to-face, applied the acquired ICT skills while 38 % of MSMEs trained virtually through Kayanak developed their own web-page to market their projects. On the other hand, 80% of trained entrepreneurs applied the acquired ICT and social entrepreneurship skills or used the networking and mentorship services, while 90% of vocational trainees have got employment opportunities that require ICT skills. The outcome of the program is reflected in the trainees’ application of the acquired skills; developing websites, applying e-marketing and developing electronic accounting system.
Partners: Egypt ICT-Trust Fund (Egyptian Ministry of Communication and Information Technology, and UNDP Egypt), Japan Government, Egyptian Ministry of Youth, Egyptian Ministry of Investment (Bedaya), Social Fund for Development (SFD), Education for Employment (EFE), Local NGOs.
Website: https://www.ysep.org.eg/default.aspx