#YOUTHEMPLOYMENT

NET-MED Youth works towards increasing youth’s role in national dialogue on current and future challenges with unemployment and skills needs. Together with employment experts, national stakeholders and youth organizations, we analyze the employment barriers and assess the skills needed for the future.

Youth unemployment is a major issue in the MENA region. 49% young women and 27% young men are unemployed [source data].  A third of the youth in the MENA countries points at unemployment as the biggest obstacle facing the region and 81% of all the youth are concerned about unemployment [source data].

The NET-MED Youth project addresses the youth unemployment issue through three actions:

1. Anticipation of future skills needs

A way to address youth unemployment is to improve the link between the skills demands in the countries and the skills that young people obtain through formal and informal education. With the help from employment experts, we try to anticipate the future skills needs in each country, following these steps:

• We set up National Expert Teams, including institutional stakeholders, youth organizations and government officials to analyze the labor market, youth unemployment and data availability challenges
• We support the development of effective tools for skills anticipation and facilitate the monitoring and discussion of the results by the National Expert Teams.

2. Youth concerns in employment policies 

In order to address youth unemployment, it is essential that the youth are involved in employment and education policy making:

• We conduct participatory workshops on skills anticipation for youth to use the anticipation results actively in public dialogue
• We train the youth in advocacy in order to participate in decision-making and to voice their concerns about skills and employment

3. Youth-friendly business environment

A third way to address the youth unemployment issue is to change the business environment towards realizing the qualities of young professionals:

• We design and implement national and regional campaigns that encourage businesses to have a youth-friendly attitude.