MCC CEO Sean Cairncross and Ivanka Trump, senior advisor to the president of the United States, announced $6.2 million of grant funding through Morocco’s Millennium Challenge Account during their visit to Morocco in early November. These funds will provide employability training to around 8,300 individuals, 70 percent of them women, and benefit around 6,300 others through a combination of training, recruitment, and coaching services that will facilitate their access to the job market.
The MCC is a bilateral foreign aid agency of the U.S. government. Partners in the project include MCA Morocco (the Moroccan arm of the MCC), Morocco’s Ministry of Employment and Vocational Training, ANAPEC (National Agency for Promotion of Employment and Skills), and nine nonprofit organizations, among them Amideast, which will deliver training services.
Amideast/Morocco has begun to reach out to Moroccan organizations to discuss possibilities for collaboration during the 16-month project. Our goal is to help job candidates improve their employment prospects through training and match them to jobs, while assisting private sector companies and organizations in meeting their hiring needs in 2020.
Amideast will select hundreds of beneficiaries from the Casablanca-Rabat region to participate in tailored training programs related to in-demand employment sectors, such as IT, administrative services, banking, and tourism. Participants are not required to have higher education diplomas; recruitment will focus on individuals who are currently unemployed and not in training, with an emphasis on women.
Amideast will draw on its experience implementing similar employability training programs for the OCP Groupe in Khouribga and Ben Guerir, as well as leverage an extensive private sector network in the Casablanca area through ongoing delivery of English language training services. Amideast expects to meet and exceed current program goals over the next year in order to extend the approach to areas beyond Casablanca and Rabat.
