Egypt Youth Employment (EYE): Economic Empowerment under FORSA Programme

Project Objectives

The “Egypt Youth Employment: Economic Empowerment under FORSA Programme” is founded on three main outcomes:

1. The first is an overarching outcome aiming at strengthening strategic partners and institutions, and private sector service providers to empower these players to adopt the implementation of wage employment and self-employment initiatives. This is achieved through capacity building and evidence creation and dissemination. This outcome aims at enhancing the sustainability of the interventions to help all national partners to scale them up at the end of the project.
2. Through the second outcome, job seekers receive dedicated support to enhance their employability skills and increases their chances to access wage employment. This involves enhancing their employability and improving their access to employers. By enhancing supervisory skills and human resource management, factories and other large employers will be able to lower turnover and grow. Promoting apprenticeships will also offer new career prospects and support the growth of small trades businesses. This is combined with financial education so that once youth have an earning capacity, they can effectively build financial resilience.
3. The third outcome works to enable self-employed women to generate more sustainable, stable incomes when accessing tailored entrepreneurship support. Entrepreneurship development services, other than microfinance, in Egypt are so far tailored to middle and upper classes. A specific focus on females or members of the families benefiting from the asset transfer programme of the national FORSA Programme with small existing or potential projects to have a more sustainable microenterprise, will be targeted for improve income generation. Target women and their families will also be financially educated to hedge against shocks and having to sell their income generating assets in times of crises.

Under this outcome, also, the project works to address entrepreneurship ecosystems in targeted communities. The approach aims at creating and sustaining businesses with good potential for growth and job creation based on economic competitive advantage of the targeted areas.

Implementing Partners

The project is implemented mainly in partnership with the Egyptian Ministry of Social Solidarity, and in cooperation with key partners such as the Ministry of Youth and Sports, Ministry of Labour, and the Federation of Egyptian Industries, in addition to other entities such as the Federation of Microcredit Institutions, the National Council for Women, the providers of financial and non-financial services, and private sector firms. At the local level, the project will cooperate with local branches of national public institutions, provider of financial and non-financial services, as well as with training providers.

Project Strategy

Building on and aligned with the rationale of the national Forsa programme, the ILO EYE Forsa project adopts a number of concepts/ approaches as part of its strategy to empower the disadvantaged families from beneficiaries of MoSS’s Takaful and Karama programme (in addition to those who were rejected from the programme but are in dire need for assistance and support). These concepts and approaches include the following:

1. Perceiving economic empowerment as part of an integrated package of social protection that includes capacity-building and training activities on employability skills and basic entrepreneurship, and that will not necessarily imply abandoning other social protection schemes already provided.
2. Promoting public, private collaboration and partnership. The delivery training programmes requires collaboration among a range of ministries, local government, civil society organisations, and the private sector. Such collaboration needs to range from the design of the programme, the delivery of services, and their continuous monitoring and improvement. The combination of efforts will lead to results greater than could be achieved by either alone.
3. Stimulating local economic development. The programme will need to build on local capacities and comparative advantages. It will need to rely on local capacities that are best able to address needs and opportunities. Economic strengths and opportunities in local economies will need to be captured. The approach intertwines individual development with the broader concept of local community development.
4. Emphasizing human capital investment. FORSA considers its beneficiaries as the actors of their own empowerment. Enhancing the skills of the target individuals and training them is required to increase opportunities for learning and success. The lack of employment leads to a lack of consumption and spending due to inadequate incomes, and in turn to inadequate savings, which means that individuals cannot invest in training, and would lack the ability to start or grow their own businesses. The training and skills development of targeted individuals to support them on their path towards employment is a key component of the FORSA programme.

Target Beneficiaries:

Men and women at working age in targeted communities in Asyut and Sharkiya, including those in households benefiting from social assistance (including beneficiaries of Takaful and Karama programme). Also, other individuals who had applied to social benefits but did not meet the conditions.

Project Outcomes

Outcome 1: Strengthen CSOs, institutions and private sector partners to initiate and improve wage and self-employment activities for youth

•        Output 1.1: 75 partners supported to implement wage employment and self-employment activities.
•        Output 1.2: Exchange knowledge with partners for wage & self-employment promotion.
 

Outcome2: Increase access to wage employment

• Output 2.1: 1000 BNFs have improved wage employment skills.
• Output 2.2: 800 BNFs obtain and/or retain employment opportunities.

Outcome 3: Promote self-employment with special focus on females

•  Output 3.1: 3400 BNF have improved business management skills for income generation.
•  Output 3.2: 400 female BNFs have access to business management training and asset transfer.