The project is promoted by MAIS, in partnership with Ingegneria Senza Frontiere, ENAIP, CONCEPT, CNQP, CUMLK, and co-financed by the Piedmont Regional Authority.
Intervention area:
borough of Sam Notaire, suburban area of Dakar, Senegal
Duration:
August 2010 - July 2011
Context
In Senegal, 70% of the population is under 30 years old and 50% of the population is unemployed.
The young population is mainly concentrated in the urban and suburban areas of Dakar.
The formal and informal economic system has difficulties in absorbing the labour force trying to integrate into the market: the result is a high unemployment rate or underemployment in the informal sector.
Despite the creation, by the government, of the Ministère del la Jeunesse, the public sector with its several local sector (social and education centres, centres for the community development support) remains insufficient in the promotion of educational and professional support services, with unemployment and frustration as consequences. The young are for too long dependent on the solidarity and support services, without being able to give something back as a compensation.
Senegal has got a very small number of big enterprises, and the small and medium ones represent the main base for the economy, but their growth potential is very limited, not only due to the lack of support services, to the negative global economic condition but also because of a difficulty in finding qualified workers, which reduces a possible competitiveness.
In the borough involved in the project, the young, direct beneficiaries of this intervention, although actively participating in all aspects of social, economical, and political life, are forced to be faced with structural problems that mainly affect the city suburbs and that prevent the young from realizing their potential, such as: a difficult access to credit, the absence of professional training, the lack of paid jobs, of job vocational and entrepreneurship guidance services for the young. To all this, there is also the fact that, often, education centres are not able to give formal certification which is valid at national level.
Objective
The project helps professional learning and training of the young from the Dakar suburbs, in the food and agricultural sector and in the renewable sources of energy sector.
Furthermore, it aims at contributing to the strengthening of the trainers’ capacities, also through an exchange of expertise with other education and training local bodies, such as the Louga Training Centre (CEFAM) and with training centres in Italy, such as En.a.i.p. Piemonte and Ingegneria Senza Frontiere Piemonte.
Production centres will be planned and will be managed and partially financed by the young involved in the project, in order to provide them with a structure and a guidance in the application of the training they had and in the realization of a self-sustainable process which can generate an income by products and services in the long term.
The project started following a previous project that MAIS promoted in partnership with Re.Te.: ‘Supporting the integration of groups of young people of the Commune d’Arrondissement of Parcelles Assainies (Dakar) into income-generating activities’.
In Senegal
- To foster technical and management skills of the young from the Dakar suburban area, providing qualified training in emerging work fields
- To provide a guidance for 60 young people to start production units and services centre, from the income generation activities’ point of view.
In Italy
- To create a network of exchange among good practices in training and education, between Southern and Northern countries, confronting with each other and through the know how communication