EDUCATION
Anera's Vocational Training Programs For Youth in Lebanon
May, 2022
With support from UNICEF, Anera is helping young people improve their employability through practical trainings and cash-for-work opportunities in Lebanon.
With support from UNICEF, we’re helping young people improve their employability through practical trainings and cash-for-work opportunities in Lebanon. Anera adopts a competency-based training approach in its vocational education courses. These courses avoid overly theoretical material in favor of imparting core skills needed on the job. Long-term employability is always the program’s central focus.
We adapt the program each year to ensure focus is on skills that are in demand and based on most up-to-date market studies. Graduating youth can therefore find solid work and incomes, mostly within the private sector. In the last year this led us to add new trainings in a range of sectors, including agriculture, healthcare (including assistants in health and senior care), IT (mobile phone repair, digital marketing and graphic design), sewing (making washable face masks, washable sanitary pads and warm winter garments for vulnerable families), construction fields (solar panel installation, electrical work, plumbing, and AC and refrigeration repair) and environmental and community mobilizations (recycling, crafts, and solid waste management).
We select participating youth between the ages of 15 and 24 who have been out of school for two or more years. To ensure that all vulnerable populations are benefitting and to avoid feeding into community tensions, we ensure a balance of 25% Syrian, 25% Palestinian, and 50% Lebanese participants.
The training portion of our courses ranges from uncertified 100-hour curricula to certified classes with 150 to 250 or more hours of class time.
In addition to their core curriculum, the young people are required to take 20 hours of employability skills and 10 hours of career guidance, covering ‘soft skills’ like how to prepare for a job interview, as well as to attend another 20 hours of general life skills courses.
Anera organizes the courses to include partnerships with private sector employers with strong expertise in the market and who also have existing employment opportunities at their premises. Last year, Anera achieved a 40% employment rate for participants from our training and cash for work programs, during a time where Lebanon’s unemployment rates were (and still are) soaring amid the ongoing economic crisis.
After the training, youth enroll in our cash-for-work program, which lasts for up to 40 days. At the end of the program, some employers will hire committed and qualified trainees.
The youth in our program are able to put their newly acquired skills to use right away in helping to address some of the serious problems confronting Lebanon. For instance, some of the young people in our construction courses go on to take cash-for-work opportunities with contractors working on rehabilitating springs and reservoirs, installing solar panels, fixing household appliances, conducting electricity and plumbing works for vulnerable households, and supporting hospitals and primary healthcare centers.
Our courses also include youth participating in UNICEF’s programming for vulnerable populations, such as adolescent girls at risk of facing gender-based violence. Anera’s training with these youth focus on conveying skills that link them to income-generating activities.
