An online seminar was organised last 27th of September to share the results of the project in Chefchaouen and M’Saken and identify transferable elements to other municipalities in Morocco and Tunisia with the aim of strengthening the role and capacities of the local governments as actors of economic development in supporting its youth population’s employability and promoting entrepreneurship.

The EMPLOIMed project, financed by the Catalan Agency for Cooperation to the Development (ACCD), has established a support service for employability and entrepreneurship of young people in Chefchaouen (MA) and M’Saken (TUN), offering spaces for co-working, information, training opportunities and support for young people. The project also offered specific training to young people in the sectors offering more job opportunities in both territories, training modules in soft skills and the organisation of job fairs, which brought together companies and young job seekers.

Between May and June 2022 both support services opened their doors to the public, offering a soft skills training programme of around 50 hours for young people. A total of 361 youngsters in Chefchaouen and 81 in M’Saken followed one of the training modules offered, which addressed the management of key competencies like communication, working on your CV and professional career management, storytelling, design thinking and/or conflict management.

The project also included the implementation of specific professional trainings targeting unemployed youth in the economic sectors offering more job opportunities in both cities. In this sense, Chefchaouen offered a training course in e-commerce in the arts and crafts sector and M’Saken in digital marketing and graphic design. Both trainings, with a duration of around 100 hours, were followed by more than 30 students in Chefchaouen and 23 in M’saken.

Finally, both cities organised a youth employability fair bringing together local businesses and young unemployed people. In Chefchaouen, the fair gathered 224 young people aged from 19 to 35 years old and 11 representatives from companies coming mostly from Tetouan and Tangier. During two days, job interviews were organised with these companies coming from different economic sectors, like digital marketing, IT, human resources, electricity, administration, construction and agro-food industry. Thanks to these recruitment processes 60 youngsters obtained a summer internship, 9 a six-month internship and 15 a job position.

In M’Saken the fair gathered more than 350 young job seekers and 28 companies from almost all the economic sectors present in the city offering 1.200 job opportunities. 10 youngsters were offered a job position and 2 an internship after passing successfully a job interview during the fair and the invited companies collected more than 250 curriculums. The event counted the participation of key public figures like the Governor of Sousse and the Director of the National Agency for Employment and was hosted by the Mayor of M’Saken.

The seminar also counted the participation of a young beneficiary of the project’s activities in M’Saken and two other experiences in the promotion of employment and youth entrepreneurship in Morocco and Tunisia were invited.

Download the seminar presentations below: