Together to Develop the Youth in Damietta

Background information

The “Together to Develop the Youth in Damietta” project aims at supporting the creation of decent employment opportunities for young men and women in the Governorate of Damietta.

Gender considerations and increased women’s participation into the labour market will be a focus of the project in addition to the promotion of green jobs. The inclusion of people with disabilities will be a cross-cutting area of intervention across the project.

The 60 months project builds on the successes and learnings of the first public private partnership project “Decent Jobs for Egypt’s Young People (DJEP): Tackling the Challenge Together in Damietta” implemented by ILO with the support of Methanex Egypt from April 2019 to September 2023. Through a mix of activities including business skills development interventions as well as facilitating job matching the first intervention managed to generate 725 jobs created.

This second intervention funded also by Methanex Egypt will build on these results as well as on the strong partnerships established with the local entities with an overall objective to reach 1000 employment opportunities.
 

The project strategy contributes to bridging the gap between skills of the youth and the Damietta labour market requirements and supporting the creation of new jobs opportunities. The interventions will be implemented in one phase. The strategy will contribute to advance gender equality via announcements inviting women to participate and via offering special courses for women.

Development Objective:  increase of decent job opportunities for young women and men in the governorate of Damietta with a focus on social inclusion, gender equality, and environmental sustainability.
Outcome 1:  Strengthened capacity of the local government bodies and NGOs to stimulate job creation and improve income-generating opportunities.
Outcome 2:  Increased self-employment jobs through the promotion of entrepreneurship.
Outcome 3: An increase in job placements for young people through better labour market matching.

In direct link to the activities that will be implemented, the potential project partners will be the Ministry of Labour (MoL), Ministry of Trade & Industry (MoTI), Ministry of Local Development (MoLD), Ministry of Social Solidarity (MOSS) and active non-profit organizations that the Ministry oversees, Ministry of Youth and Sports (MoYS), Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research (MOHESR), Ministry of Education and Technical Educational (MoETE), the Medium, Small, and Micro Enterprise Development Agency (MSMEDA), National Council for Women (NCW), Supreme Council for People with Disabilities, Damietta libraries, Damietta universities, Damietta technical centers, etc.

The project target groups are:
1.         Damietta governorate staff (cabinet and cities staff),
2.         Non-profit organizations active on youth employability, skills development and entrepreneurship,
3.         Young people (at least 40% of the beneficiaries are women).
 

The project will target youth and women graduates from universities and institutes, technical education, and training centers in the governorate of Damietta to improve their access to decent jobs or create their own business. 
 

In parallel, the project will promote a capacity building programme for government officials at governorate level to increase their knowledge on specific topics related to local development, youth employment, entrepreneurship and project formulation and management. If needed, the project will support specific activities on digital skills and languages to reinforce their capacity to work with youth in the digital world.