NAJAH is a USAID-funded program aimed at increasing employability among Jordanian youth aged 18 - 24. As part of the program, NAJAH:
- Builds youth employability and entrepreneurship skills with a focus on soft skills that help youth ‘to be’, ‘to do’, ‘to know’ and ‘to relate’.
- Fosters positive attitudes towards work, available job opportunities among youth and their parents.
- Supports youth to put learned skills and positive attitudes into practice.
- Builds youth knowledge of and connection to their community and available job opportunities within it.
Participants are aged between 18 and 24 years, unemployed and not engaged in education. Although they have access to limited skill sets, they have a strong sense of commitment, interest in building their own capacities and becoming active members of their society.
Results to date include:
- More than 300 youth have participated in the six month NAJAH interactive training program in the north, center and south of Jordan.
- More than 70% of NAJAH youth have entered the labor market, continuing to increase their skills and experience base.
- Nearly 20% of NAJAH youth have returned to education or specialized training schemes with a clearer vision of their career paths and interests.
- More than 5,000 parents and family members have supported NAJAH youth during the training and, afterwards, in seeking, securing and remaining in work.
- More than 60 employers have directly supported NAJAH by participating in the training, sponsoring NAJAH components, recruiting NAJAH youth into their businesses and ensuring that the NAJAH curriculum meets the needs of a rapidly expanding economy.
Saba Al Mobaslat
Smobaslat@Savechildren.org.jo
October 2005 to September 2008
Recognizing that the majority of orphans are cared for by family members, Project HOPE focuses on strengthening the capacity of caregivers to provide comprehensive care and support to improve the well-being of children. To address the increased economic needs of orphans and vulnerable children’s (OVC) households and assist in providing the means for sustainable, long term program impact, Project HOPE provides micro-loans and conducts savings mobilization for OVC caregivers to engage in small-scale income generation activities.
The project also uses the vehicle of these loan & savings groups to promote parenting training on the important domains of OVC care and support. Project HOPE developed an OVC-targeted educational curriculum covering essential OVC care and support. The training provides OVC caregivers with education and access to information and resources to help them support the needs of all children under their care, including orphans. This education encompasses a variety of domains including household nutrition, health, parenting skills, HIV prevention, appropriate protection, legal rights, and psycho-social support.
The economic strengthening activities are complemented by community outreach mobilization to further support the needs of OVC providers/caretakers and OVC. Project HOPE mobilizes a network of community based volunteers who are trained through a training of trainers (TOT) methodology on the specialized OVC educational curriculum. These volunteers will in turn identify OVC providers/caretakers within their community and provide home visits, training, counseling, and referral services for them to better improve the well-being of OVC under their support.,
Monitoring and evaluation are critical components of Project HOPE’s approach. Socio-economic profiles are collected on participants in economic strengthening activities to document changes in economic status. Project HOPE has also initiated low-literacy data collection tools that can be managed by the caregivers to empower them in knowing both current status and desired outcomes for the children under their care – referred to as a “parenting map”.
Project HOPE has documented increased income and improved financial resources for OVC caretakers, allowing them to better purchase school uniforms, pay school fees, buy an increased quality and quantity of food, and improve access to medical care. When combined with the increased knowledge about parenting and child-care issues across multiple domains of need, orphans and vulnerable children are shown to receive provide better care and support, and an improvement in their overall well-being.
The project is also active in Namibia and South Africa.
John Bronson
Director, Economic Strengthening Programs
jbronson@projecthope.org
April 2005 to April 2010
The RENDER project increased rural incomes in the target area by bringing together active and motivated associations to build economies of scale, increase marketing power, and facilitate business contracting. It enabled farmer-owned businesses to become a growing part of a dynamic agribusiness sector in Mozambique's Manica Province. The program analyzed market chains for key commodities, such as maize, beans, ground nuts, paprika, garlic and fresh fruits and vegetables, and then targeted technical assistance to address weaknesses in the farm-to-market process. RENDER staff taught new production and postharvest techniques; provided training in association development and better business management; and assisted farmers to market fruit and vegetables to high-end retail outlets, such as supermarkets in the provincial capital, as well as regional and extra-regional processors.
The Young Farmers Initiative, a sub-project of RENDER, established 13 students from the Chimoio Agricultural Institute (IAC) as commercial farmers. The program had four phases:
- Five-month internship with Zimbabwean farmers (January to May 2004)
- Thesis writing and defense and graduation from IAC (June 2004)
- Young farmers produce inside commercial farms (2004-2005)
- Young farmers begin producing for themselves on land legalized by DPA and have access for up to USD 30,000 in credit from GAPI (2005-2006)
During phases one and two, ACDI/VOCA staff provided monthly classes on agribusiness and basic computer skills to the students.
Paul Guenette
pguenette@acdivoca.org
October 2001 to January 2005
The STRIVE Philippines Project, an initiative of Action for Enterprise (AFE), aims to improve child well-being by strategically linking small producers in poor coastal communities with key market actors in other parts of appropriate value chains. AFE anticipates that these linkages will help increase household income among coastal communities and reduce the economic vulnerability of the families and children who live there.
Coastal communities are among the poorest in the Philippines and rely on sea-based resources such as seaweed farming and fishing for their livelihoods. It is estimated that more than half of seaweed farmers live at or below the poverty line, despite the fact that the Philippines is a major global supplier of seaweed for the production of carrageenan, an extract that is widely used as a thickener, stabilizer, and gelling agent. Many coastal households have little or no access to agricultural land and so must rely on cash income to purchase food and meet their basic needs. When cash flow comes up short, families’ food, healthcare and education expenditures suffer.
The STRIVE Philippines Project interventions center on market-based solutions that contribute to the competitiveness of industries in coastal communities. These interventions will include:
- encouraging suppliers and processing firms to invest in new production areas and techniques,
- expanding and strengthening market linkages,
- improving information flow among actors and between levels of the value chain, and
- supporting research and pilot activities to identify innovative, sustainable solutions to current obstacles to high-quality production.
By facilitating these activities with existing actors, the project aims to achieve sustainable improvements in production, leading to increases in household income.
STRIVE Philippines will work with a Project Advisory Committee comprised of leading child-focused organizations in the Philippines to ensure that increased household incomes result in reduced vulnerability among children and youth in targeted coastal communities. STRIVE Philippines is one of five initiatives under the AED STRIVE Program exploring effective means of reducing the vulnerability of children and youth through economic strengthening.
Henry Panlibuton
Chief of Party, Philippines
Action for Enterprise
2009 N. 14th Street, Suite 301
Arlington, VA 22201 USA
henry@actionforenterprise.org
- July 2008 to December 2011
