As Founder and Chair of Education for Employment (EFE –www.efefoundation.org), Ron Bruder set the ambitious goal of helping young, unemployed men and women in the Middle East find jobs. That effort places Bruder and EFE squarely at the intersection of philanthropy, for-profit and nonprofit organizations, and government.
“We believe that we can be a catalyst, encouraging education systems to change how they train so they can graduate employment-ready youth,” Bruder said of the organization and its work. “Major local educational institutions are beginning to work with us. The unemployment situation is such that they welcome our help.”
Bruder said his organization does not impose a foreign approach or culture on local problems. “We work with whatever the need is, and our work is very local,” he said. “It’s all done through a local foundation and local board.”
EFE learned the hard way that multiple sources of local involvement are needed to make its programs work. “In the early days in Egypt and Jordan, we did it without building a local board,” he said. “That was the wrong strategy – you can’t start with only one relationship. But we were hungry; we wanted to get going.”
Now, he said, bringing together a broad, influential and hard-working set of local advisors is a necessary first step. Whether EFE will launch operations in a new country “depends on whether we can build a local board of powerful, committed people.” That determination, combined with EFE’s track record, has opened up new opportunities for the organization. “Three years ago I went to Yemen and met with a group of local leaders,” Bruder said. “I told them I wanted a real commitment – I wanted to see $50,000 today. Perhaps the translator made an error. All I know is that by the end of the day, we wound up with over half a million dollars in local contributions.”
In-country partners offer leadership, resources and familiarity with the local context. “We’re in the franchising business,” Bruder said. “It’s the local operators who make all the decisions because they know the local needs.”
The unemployment situation Bruder refers to was starkly framed by the World Bank in 2003, when it issued a forecast that 100 million new jobs would be needed in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) by 2020, due to high unemployment and explosive population growth. That estimate meant the number of jobs in the region would have to nearly double to meet demand.
“In no small measure, MENA’s economic future will be determined by the fate of its labor markets,” the World Bank report noted. “If current trends continue, economic performance and the well-being of workers will be undermined by rising unemployment and low productivity.”
As if those stakes weren’t already high enough, Bruder had a broader goal in mind when he created EFE. “From the Weimar to Cuba, it’s clear that when you have a free and vibrant economy, it makes it very easy for democracy to flourish,” he said. “Today, it’s truer than ever that the economy makes a difference.”
A serial entrepreneur who created successful companies in real estate development and other fields, Bruder said he witnessed the “peace dividend” of economic success first-hand during the 1990s in Ireland, where he travelled for a business venture. “When the Irish economy moved forward, the main conflict issues disappeared,” he said. “I saw people move from killing each other to making a killing together.”
The New York-based entrepreneur chose to focus on the Middle East and North Africa after the terrorist attacks of 2001. With the help of experts, he researched and traveled the region, ultimately concluding that existing institutions weren’t giving young people the skills and training they needed to secure jobs and succeed in the workplace.
How it works
Bruder’s organization is built on partnerships. Sister EFE support organizations in the United States and Europe build partnerships that provide funding, pro bono support or capacity-building expertise to the local EFE affiliates in Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Palestine, Tunisia and Yemen. The local affiliates connect with companies – from multinationals to small- and medium-sized businesses – looking to hire, as well as with unemployed and socially excluded youth. With support from EFE in the United States and in Europe, affiliates design targeted training programs that fit the demands of the local job market and provide follow-up support for graduates, linking them to jobs, mentoring and opportunities for continuing education, leadership training and civic engagement.
“When we established Education for Employment, we did not envision it as merely a training institute. We structured our organization as a networked platform of locally run nonprofits that build public-private partnerships in which companies, donors, educational institutions, nonprofits and youth organizations combine their expertise and resources to complete the circle: train youth, then link them to companies looking to hire the right skill set, then provide ongoing support such as mentoring and professional development,” Bruder said in a February speech at a United Nations meeting on youth employment.
A sampling of U.S. partners includes ManpowerGroup, New York University, McGraw-Hill, Microsoft, the MasterCard Foundation, Accenture, and several U.S. government agencies.
Last November, EFE and the MasterCard Foundation announced a three-year, $3.2 million initiative to increase the employability skills of more than 15,000 unemployed and disadvantaged young people in Morocco. And in March, Intel awarded EFE a $100,000 grant to train young entrepreneurs in Egypt, Palestine and Jordan.
“Our partners help in key ways,” Bruder noted. “There’s money, but we also need employers in the region or that we can induce to go into the region by serving as their local HR solution. If we can give them the labor force, then they will be more amenable to operating in those countries.”
He appreciates the generosity of EFE’s partners, but takes a practical view of their contributions. “We’re investing their money. I’m back in the same old business,” he noted wryly. “The return I need to give them is good courses, good curricula and good employees in the labor market.”
The organization graduated its first class in Gaza in 2006, and expanded into Jordan, Morocco, the West Bank, Egypt and Yemen. The most recent affiliate in the EFE Network is EFE-Tunisia, which EFE was invited to launch following the revolution. Some of EFE’s local partners include the Hassan II University of Casablanca, the Birzeit University Center for Continuing Education in the West Bank and the United Nations Development Programme.
At the core of EFE’s trainings is the Workplace Success Program in professional skills and business etiquette, published by McGraw-Hill and created through a collaboration between American career education experts and Jordanian business leaders. The program has been tailored for use in Jordan, Morocco and Yemen. Other programs include banking, textile merchandising and civic engagement (Egypt); HVAC training, land surveying and teacher training (Jordan); a “mini-MBA” program and construction management (Palestine); sales force training and life skills training (Morocco); and business English and information technology courses (Yemen). In 2011, EFE began to pilot youth entrepreneurship programs as a pathway to economic opportunity, and has launched entrepreneurship training and mentoring across the EFE Network.
EFE’s presence in the region has grown beyond Bruder’s expectations. The organization has graduated and placed in jobs more than 2,300 young people since its inception. Here’s a closer look:
- EFE-Egypt has trained and placed in jobs more than 175 youth, with a 100% job retention rate.
- In Jordan, EFE’s affiliate JCEF has trained and placed in jobs more than 1,285 young people, with a 64% job retention rate.
- In Morocco, more than 420 youth have been trained and placed in jobs, with a 93% job retention rate.
- Palestine EFE has trained and placed in jobs more than 285 young people, 95% of whom retained their jobs.
- In Yemen, more than 580 youth have been trained and placed in jobs, and 94% of them have retained their jobs.
EFE’s graduate numbers don’t put much of a dent in the World Bank’s 100-million-job target. In fact, there is little hard data available on how well the region as a whole is progressing toward that goal. However, Bruder hopes the organization’s success spurs others into multiplying the gains. “We think we’re pushing local education systems by having an impact disproportionate to our size,” he said, noting that almost no universities in the region can equal EFE’s rates of job placement and retention. “Eventually, we’ll push these countries to a tipping point, where it won’t be acceptable for universities not to match our job placement rates.”
What the future holds
EFE is working to leverage its relationships to make better use of technology, both as a recruiting tool and for employment opportunities. It recently began working in Morocco with Souktel, a service that seeks to match MENA-region job seekers and employers via mobile phone communications. At the same time, EFE is working with companies such as Intel, Microsoft and Google on identifying training needs in the targeted countries. “We need to be in the 21st century,” Bruder said. “We need all those technologies on our side; they’re tools for employment.”
The success EFE has seen in its first few years has opened new doors, Bruder said. The organization’s latest landing place, Tunisia, came together quickly. “When we started making preliminary trips there, we were told, ‘We need what you have now, not next year,’” he said.
To illustrate the level of commitment in that country, Bruder points out that the chairman of EFE-Tunisia is Said Aïdi, a successful entrepreneur and the former minister of employment in the transitional government formed after Tunisia ignited the Arab Spring uprisings in 2011. “I’m optimistic because our programs are growing more rapidly than we would ever have imagined,” Bruder said. “We’re opening in Tunisia because the Tunisians get it – they understand what we’re trying to do.”
Because of EFE’s growing role in the MENA region, Bruder has been called upon to talk about the Arab Spring and whether the side-by-side growth of both democracy and economy can be nurtured and sustained. His take at the moment is mixed; his enthusiasm about the progress EFE has made is tempered by the growing pains several countries have endured in recent months, particularly Egypt.
Economic and political problems mean Egypt is “going through a tough period; tourism, for example, is virtually nonexistent,” Bruder said. “But we’ve got a really crackerjack CEO there, and our chairman and board are strong. People see our work as a way out.”
While the employment needs the World Bank identified remain great, and other MENA countries are clamoring for EFE to come, Bruder is inclined to move carefully. “I see us potentially going into other countries in the region, but the constraint is local partners and funding” he said. “What matters is that some of the money be local, enough so that the locals have skin in the game. Then it works.”
There are more practical reasons to go slow, he adds. “Our resources have been stretched. Where we are today is where we thought we’d be in 20 years.”
That growth simply confirms what Bruder concluded when he first decided how he would direct his philanthropic efforts. “We had the right idea at the right time – look at the Arab Spring,” he said. “The biggest thing now is to get these kids into the labor market.”
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