Amman, Jordan (ILO News) – The Ministry of Youth in partnership with the International Labour Organization (ILO) and UNICEF have launched a new collaboration on Saturday (March 26) to equip Jordanian and Syrian young people with improved job search and employability skills, helping them explore potential career pathways and successfully transition to the labour market.

The parties will work jointly to implement the Job Search Clubs (JSC) programme, an ILO methodology, providing youth with activities set to help them find suitable work within a short period of time.

The first training course for the facilitators of the Job Search Clubs has recently started in Jordan’s southern governorates and is set to progressively continue in the country’s northern and central areas, including in the Za’atari and Al Azraq Syrian refugee camps. Sixty project facilitators will then work in the country’s youth centres, reaching up to 300 young people in the 18-29 age bracket to facilitate their access to job opportunities.

“Empowering young people and building their capabilities in line with the requirements of the labour market is one of the Ministry’s priorities and one of the main axes of the national youth strategy,” said Youth Minister Muhammad Al-Nabulsi . “We value the multi-agency cooperation in implementing this project, which will eventually enable young people to get a deeper understanding of the labour market and its requirements, and develop methods to search for suitable job opportunities.”

The new collaboration is part of the wider PROSPECTS programme, supported by the Government of the Netherlands, which focuses on three key pillars: education, employment, and protection in the context of forced displacement and will be implemented by Jordan Business Development Center (BDC).

“Supporting young Jordanians and Syrian refugee women and men to access decent employment is pivotal to the ILO mandate in the country, and one that we are especially focused on under the PROSPECTS partnership,” said Frida Khan, ILO Jordan Decent Work and Country Coordinator. “The programme not only fosters peer-to-peer exchanges among young job seekers, creating new connections, but it also allows young people to hone their job search abilities, matching their qualifications and skillset.”

Based on two-week job search support activities, Job Clubs bring together different individuals facing similar challenges to enter the labour market. Young people will receive intensive coaching by trained facilitators on job search-related skills. Using tailor-made JSC manuals adapted to the Jordanian context, participants will receive the guidance, information, and tools needed during their search for employment.

“Young people in Jordan have the ideas, motivation and ability to successfully transition to adulthood but we must address the skills gap that is preventing them from gaining meaningful employment,” said Tanya Chapuisat, UNICEF Jordan Representative. “This new programme will help empower young people with the skills they need to thrive.”

At the end of the two-week intensive programme, jobseekers will benefit from a further three-month window in which they will receive assessments on their employment status by the UN agencies.

Prior to COVID-19, the unemployment rate among young people in Jordan was 32 per cent, but this has increased due to the impact of the pandemic, according to the Jordan Department of Statistics (DoS). Recent ILO and World Bank estimates show unemployment for youth in the 15-24 age bracket has reached over 40 per cent.

PROSPECTS is a strategic four-year global partnership, made possible by support from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, that supports host communities and displaced populations in eight countries across East and North Africa and the Arab States and which also includes the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the World Bank (WB) and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).