Education program helps young people in Middle East get jobs

CAIRO — Information technology programmer Menna Mohamed is 23, confident, articulate and poised.
Unlike many others her age, she’s also proud to say she’s employed.
Mohamed attributes her success in part to a job-training and placement program she completed at Education for Employment. EFE is a network of non-profit groups that equip young adults with professional skills and help them get jobs in Egypt and across the region.
“What happened was a miracle. My personality changed completely — 100% — and now I can communicate easily with people,” Mohamed said about the program.
EFE was founded by Brooklyn-born entrepreneur Ron Bruder, who was jolted into action after fearing that his daughter, who worked in Lower Manhattan, might not have survived the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
It turned out that his daughter was fine. But he was driven to learn what fueled the animosity behind the attacks and determine what he could do to address it.
After traveling extensively through the Middle East, Bruder said he discovered a disconnect between what is taught at universities and what is needed in the workplace. That education gap prompted him to establish EFE to help young people get the necessary skills to land a job.
“We believe that jobs and employed youth lead to stable societies,” said Bruder, who lives in New York.
More than half of the population is younger than 25 years old in the Middle East and North Africa. The region also has the world’s highest rate of youth unemployment: 27% in the Middle East and more than 29% in North Africa, according to the World Economic Forum.
Widespread joblessness and overall economic hardship helped power the political uprisings that swept through the region starting in 2010. In Egypt, the factors contributed to the nation’s protests against longtime leader Hosni Mubarak in 2011, then the ousting of Mohammed Morsi as president two years ago.
“If we don’t have mass employment of youth in this country, we are going to have a third revolution — there is no question about that,” said Anis Aclimandos, board chairman of Education for Employment/Egypt. “The more you have people who are disenchanted and who don’t enjoy anything in life, the more likely you are to get into trouble.”
A popular refrain among the youth here is unemployment stems from a lack of jobs. Others say jobs are available, but a dearth of applicants’ skills — such as how to get to work on time or act in an interview — leads to rife unemployment.
“We have, I think, an underperforming educational system generally throughout the region, and it is producing people who are not really prepared for today’s job market,” said Rami Khalid Alturki, president and CEO of Alturki, a Saudi Arabian investment and development company that helps support EFE’s programs.
EFE launched its first programs in the Gaza Strip in 2006 and has trained more than 28,500 students through its affiliated organizations in the West Bank, Tunisia and elsewhere across the region, according to Mariel Davis, communications and partnerships manager at EFE.
In Yemen, it helps unemployed young men and women acquire skills to get jobs. In Morocco, it partners with universities to boost graduates’ employment prospects. In Egypt, it offers a range of programs that focus on everything from linking students to internships to teaching them how to write résumés.
“It’s a well-known fact that if you are employed in a decent job, you are not a terrorist, you are not a criminal, you are not a harasser — you are not, you are not, you are not,” said Ismail El Habrouk, CEO of Education for Employment/Egypt.
The organization points to its success. In Egypt, for example, it boasts an 81% employment rate of students who have completed the programs since 2009, according to Farah Osman, operations manager at Education for Employment Egypt.
“Organizations or programs like these will help you be a seeker — seeking self-improvement, seeking jobs, seeking motivation,” said Mokhtar Hussein Mustafa, 21, who completed a month-long hospitality program in Egypt and now works at a restaurant called Zooba in Cairo.
EFE’s work in the region, however, faces the same problems it aims to minimize. Two years ago, the organization decided not to work in Iraq because of concerns about long-term stability, Bruder said. And in Yemen, two of the organization’s employees were killed in March in attacks on two mosques by suicide bombers.
Bruder said he’s both discouraged and motivated by unrest in the region.
“I think people realize — I realize — that the work is more important than ever,” he said.
Source: USA Today