Our day in Rabat culminated with a fascinating engagement with USAID and the Morocco Career Center development staff. Our team met with Miriam Keep, Program Support Officer for youth development, who explained how the Millennium Challenge Corporation is working to address the challenge of youth unemployment in Morocco.
USAID began their assessment in 2015 by identifying essential skills gaps and focusing on why unemployment is up even among highly educated Moroccan youth. Through six career centers located in Casablanca, Marrakesh and Tangier, as well as an online virtual center, USAID is working to develop "soft skills" and help college-educated Moroccans find employment. USAID services include online courses, orientation programs to identify strengths and weaknesses, a resume builder, and online access to information about the labor market and job postings.
USAID’s youth career development efforts have been met with resounding support. The Moroccan Ministry of Education plans to adopt some of the USAID course curricula into its own programming. The Office of Vocational Training and Employment Promotion (OFPPT) will run Technical and Vocational Education Training (TVET) centers in 2019. In addition, USAID is working on developing young entrepreneur career courses and workshops targeting formation of small to midsize enterprises (SME).
Despite the recent success in USAID’s mission, there remain serious challenges to program sustainability beyond 2019. Three main barriers include limited access to information in rural communities, implementation challenges anticipated by TVET faculty, and the complexity of language of instruction across Amazigh (Berber), Moroccan Arabic (known as Darija), and French.