MENU
back
en
The Y&B project is implemented by PlanBørnefonden, Swisscontact and its local partners along with Copenhagen Zoo.
The Danish-Arab Partnership aims to create a better life for young people in the Middle East and North Africa and to ensure that young people have better opportunities for employment and civic/human rights engagement and are therefore more likely to create a future in their own country and less likely to emigrate.
The DAPP comprises two complementary programs: the Human Rights and Inclusion Program (HRI) and the Youth Employment and Entrepreneurship Program (YEE).
The current YIEP (2022 - 2027) is already implementing activities to address some of these constraints. The project supports young people through three distinct pathways, depending on their level of education and ambitions: disengaged youth, job seekers and budding entrepreneurs. Whatever the entry point, the pathways lead young people to a destination where they can leave YIEP with enhanced employability, a guaranteed job and/or as an established entrepreneur.
YIEP's current structure provides an excellent basis for integrating biodiversity and conservation awareness principles into the pathways, and for "greening" some of the jobs created under the current project.
The proposed Y&B project includes a separate innovation component designed to explore and pilot initiatives to engage and create jobs for young people aged 15-35. These initiatives include training trainers on how to actively involve people in nature conservation, expanding young nature guides' skill sets on biodiversity and nature conservation, and integrating new biodiversity and nature conservation curricula into the Ministry of Tourism's training center. Indeed, these innovative activities reinforce existing YIEP activities by bringing Copenhagen Zoo's expertise in training methodologies, biodiversity and nature conservation, thus helping to improve the employability of young people in green sectors and create green jobs within the DAPP.
From the second year of implementation (2025), the Y&B project will also accelerate and expand the scope of ongoing activities under YIEP, such as supporting young entrepreneurs, improving their skills and financing start-ups. In line with these ambitions, additional funds will be mobilized to finance start-ups and green entrepreneurs.
The Y&B project builds on recent changes in policy and strategy in the Moroccan forestry and tourism sectors, and the opportunities that these present. It is designed on the one hand, to promote the inclusion and engagement of young people around biodiversity and green employment/entrepreneurship and, on the other, to ensure that the biodiversity and natural environment associated with these activities are protected and managed sustainably.
The project will contribute to YIEP's expected results, namely improving the employability of young people and creating jobs, 30% of which must be "green" jobs. More specifically, the project is linked to activities implemented by Swisscontact in Morocco, aimed at encouraging innovation and developing new ideas in high-impact growth sectors, including jobs and entrepreneurship centered on nature-based tourism or other nature-based activities such as park management.