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Interviews with Najah: Transcript

Najah is a program of Save the Children in Jordan, aiming to "increase the employability of Jordanian youth through learning-by-doing approaches, career counseling, support to stay in work, and community mobilization designed to enhance parents' support for youth employment and entrepreneurship."

To learn more about the program, MEYI communications specialist Samantha Constant interviewed Najah staff members Amy Mina, Deputy Program Director for Save the Children in Jordan; Mario Twal, Community Mobilizer & Team Leader for Najah in the Central Region; and Roa'a Khudairij, Trainer for the Najah Program, Central Region, about their work.

 

 

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Samantha Constant, Communications Specialist, Middle East Youth Initiative: When and how did the Najah program come about? What were the driving principles behind its inception?

 

Amy Mina, Deputy Program Director, Save the Children, Jordan: Save the Children has been working here in Jordan since 1985, and our approach to working globally, and also particularly in Jordan, is really to go to the communities and listen to what their issues are, what their needs are, and see how much they fit in with what we’re able to do and what we’re good at. And, so, since about the late 1990s – 1998 – Save the Children looked at Jordan’s developmental indicators. They’re good on education, on health, on the basic infrastructure – all the basic things that you would expect in a transitioning country are in place. And so the question was, what do we do here? What are the needs, what can we add value?

And when we looked at the demographics of the society, where 40% of the population is under 15, and 70% is under 30, we saw that youth is really an important area to work in. In 1999, Save the Children launched one of the really strong, pioneering programs on youth in Jordan, called Injaz, which means “achievement.” Injaz works with youth in schools, and it’s really looking at economic education, and it’s still going strong as an independent organization – a really big trademark not only in Jordan but across the region; in fact, the director of Injaz has just won a Davos award. (Listen)

There’s a fair bit of economic growth in Jordan; there’s quite a number of jobs. But there’s still very high unemployment. So the question was, “Why?”

 

After Injaz we continued to look at what else is needed, and about 4 years ago we started to look at not just work knowledge and knowledge about the private sector, but also really work readiness, especially for youth who’ve had less educational opportunities and who have less connection to the labor market. And that’s really where Najah started. It looked at – we did a field study. We went to communities across the country. We interviewed youth. We had focus group discussions with parents. We met with employers, because they’re a really important part of this thinking. We met with government, and we met with donors. And we looked at what’s already here (because we always look at the assets that are already here in the community and build them) and what the gaps are. Because, you know, Jordan’s in a really unique position. There’s a fair bit of economic growth in Jordan; there’s quite a number of jobs; the population in general has high education indicators relative to a developing country. But there’s still very high unemployment, at more than 14%, and particularly for young people who are aged up to 30. So the question was, “Why?” And the answer that came back was: relevant skills for the labor market, positive attitudes to get into the labor market, and parental support and community support to engage in the kinds of job that are opening up, rather than the more traditional jobs in government, in the army, in the high-level professions like medicine and engineering. Those are the jobs that didn’t exist. But the jobs that did exist – in tourism, in marketing, in the service industry, in manufacturing – those are the jobs that young people didn’t have skills for, didn’t know about, and didn’t have support to take up.

And that’s really – it’s that field base that really led us to develop Najah. We worked with all those stakeholders, we looked at a variety of options. They helped us to refine what we want to do, and we developed Najah from there.

Samantha: Amy, tell us a little more about the communities you worked with. How did you identify the communities that were selected?

 
Amy: Well, we didn’t pre-select the communities before we started working on the program. In our program design we committed to working with both urban and peri-urban communities, in the north central and south of Jordan. I’ll leave Mario to talk a little bit more about communities, but I will say first that Jordan is highly urbanized. 82% of the population lives in urban and peri-urban centers. And so that’s one of the features – I mean, actually what we say is in Jordan, 40% of the population is under the age of 15, as I said. 60% is under 25. 70% is under 30 and unemployed. 80% is urban – 82%. 90% is educated. If you look at it, what you have is an educated, clustered, idle, very young population. And it’s in those clusters that we wanted to focus. And we also, because Najah aims to link youth to work, we needed to focus on areas that have work opportunities. So, really, in terms of the field research, it was done in communities in all areas: north, center, south. That’s really the bigger difference areas. And both urban and, to a lesser extent, rural. In terms of our work, we work in all areas.
 

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