Supporting the economic inclusion of youth

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The development objective of the Supporting the Economic Inclusion of Youth Project for Morocco is to increase access to economic opportunities for youth in the project area. There are three components to the project.First component, Promoting youth employability and economic inclusion is to provide individual support to sub-groups of youth to improve their access to economic opportunities through the set-up of outreach, information, profiling and orientation services (through on-the-job training and skills development, referral to entrepreneurship support activities and job opportunities, and intermediation services provided by the project and complementary programs available in the territory of project activities). The activities are also expected to improve individual social skills and promote positive social outcomes. This component includes two sub-components: (i) the set-up of the Youth Employment Centers (EEJs), an information, orientation and referral system for young people, allowing them to improve their employability through better skills, knowledge of opportunities, and access to labor market intermediation services and other existing programs; and (ii) skills development support that focuses on the needs of the labor market at the provincial and regional level, primarily to benefit low skilled youth, including specific segments of the youth population such as rural women, with a strong emphasis on job placement and economic inclusion (aiming to improve the employability of young people, strengthen the support system for economic inclusion of direct beneficiaries, and set up a more dynamic, effective, efficient and relevant skills development approach in line with labor market demand and emerging economic sectors such as adaptive and clean smart technologies); Second component, Fostering the entrepreneurial ecosystem and supporting entrepreneurship opportunities for youth aims to develop the regional entrepreneurial ecosystem, increase entrepreneurship support for youth, particularly those targeted under component 1, and enable job creation in selected high potential value chains in the region of Marrakech-Safi. This will be achieved through three sub-components, setting up: (i) a network of Regional/Provincial Entrepreneurship and Economic Development Centers (REEDC/PEEDC), a go-to place for aspiring entrepreneurs and established MSMEs, offering a range of support services, (ii) an entrepreneurship program to support new firms created by youth, offering financial and capacity support for aspiring entrepreneurs and newly established businesses, and (iii) a value chains development program, providing capacity building and support to existing MSMEs and cooperatives active in selected value chains with a high potential for job creation; Third component, institutional capacity building for project implementation support aims to: (i) strengthen the capacity of actors (MTIP and the other project implementing agencies) to manage, coordinate and oversee the execution of project activities and achieve the gender specific targets under each component; (ii) provide capacity building to MTIP and the other project implementing agencies in the intervention areas related to the project; (iii) strengthen the region's capacity and programs pertaining to youth inclusion, particularly of young women, skills training and territorial development; and (iii) put in place the mechanisms and regional policies to collect information on the regional labor market.