Dorcas and Woord en Daad sign partnership agreement on job creation in Ethiopia

Dorcas and Woord en Daad will continue their cooperation on job creation for Ethiopian youth in 2023. Since 2016, Dorcas and Woord en Daad have collaborated in Ethiopia on job creation for young people. Within the Employable Youth Ethiopia (EYE) programme, they realised more than 20,000 jobs between 2016-2021 within a multi-party consortium through intensive cooperation with vocational schools, entrepreneurial training providers and private parties. Several networks were also launched to improve dialogue between stakeholders.

After the EYE programme ended, both parties decided not to terminate the infrastructure built up and to complete innovations. For instance, the Centre of Excellence model, in which vocational schools train young people for companies based on pre-made job and wage guarantees, will be further developed with in 2023. Entrepreneurship training providers are also developing new collaborations to better support young people get (digital) business support and access to start-up capital.

This week, Agnes Kroese, CEO of Dorcas and Rina Molenaar, CEO of Woord en Daad signed a new partnership agreement that reflects the intention to work together in the coming years to make structural changes in the youth and employment system and to create jobs on a large scale. ‘We know each other and have built a special shared history in Ethiopia,’ Agnes Kroese said, ‘It would be illogical not to do our utmost to continue to seek collaboration, be complementary to each other and continue to tap into the potential of each other and others. That serves the interest of the young people we are both committed to.’

Rina Molenaar agrees: ‘This partnership agreement is a starting point for a joint exploration of how to achieve large-scale change. In this, we must be able to put our own role into perspective, become ambitious to be modest and proactively engage in cooperation.’

The continuing EYE programme brings together key Ethiopian stakeholders such as the Ministry of Skills and Labour, the Chamber of Commerce, workers’ and employers’ organisations and micro-credit umbrellas to discuss and improve current schemes and policies. Meanwhile, the programme is innovatively creating hundreds of new jobs for young people. In this, Dorcas and Woord en Daad are supported by Dutch companies and thrift shops.

03 July 2023