In the Arab region youth unemployment currently stands at 29%. There is an urgent need to create jobs for young people and provide them with the skills, guidance, confidence, empowerment and education to prepare them for the job market. Finding solutions to this is the focus of the Arab Youth Employment Forum taking place this week in Amman, Jordan.
One innovative solution to this daunting situation is mentoring, which can support Arab youth to develop entrepreneurial skills and thinking as well as gain an understanding of their areas of talent and support their leadership development. Our global research study of the school-to-work transition showed that in Jordan there is an untapped source of mentors for young people, in the form of alumni students. 55% of adults polled in Jordan said they were willing to be mentor or e-mentors to current students at their former schools.
[gdlr_quote align=”center” ]55% of adults polled in Jordan said they were willing to be mentor or e-mentors to current students at their former schools. 24% of young people do not believe people like themselves will succeed in their careers[/gdlr_quote]
National polling of young people in Jordan showed 24% of young people do not believe people like themselves will succeed in their careers. This highlights the need for them to have access to role models and mentors ‘like them’ who have gone on to be successful. 71% of young people said the identified strongly with people who went to their school.
At Future First Global we support the development of high school alumni networks. Bringing former students back to their schools as mentors and career advisers.
Today we are releasing the findings of our research in Arabic, to help enable the region to unleash this latent desire to give back and ultimately help young people to make the transition from school to work. Our report can be found in Arabic here. It is also available to download in English.
As one Head Teacher in Jordan said “The culture of community exists but nobody is putting it to good use.
It is time to change that and we look forward to developing innovative and sustainable plans with others at the Arab Youth forum this week.
