Promoting quality internships to facilitate entry to the labour market

4 may 2018, Rabat. New developments in the advancement of the scaling-up strategy of the UfM labelled project “HOMERe” were achieved at Mohammed V University in Rabat, Morroco, on 4 May 2018, during a Euro-Mediterranean event on “International internships as a tool for youth employability in the Mediterranean” which celebrated ten years of cooperation between French and Moroccan universities and companies in this respect. Several alumni received at that occasion the certificate recognising that they successfully performed a quality internship in the Mediterranean region in the HOMERe framework.

Saïd Bhira, Special Counsellor to the UfM Secretary General for Higher Education and Research, affirmed that “HOMERe opened up a concrete and innovative approach to the employability challenge by promoting long-term internship mobility between nine Mediterranean countries as a tool for skill improvement, forcultural openness and integration of youth in the labour market”.

“Ecosystem is the key to sucess when talking about addressing youth employability” highlighted Jihen Boutiba, Secretary General of BUSINESSMED, partner of the project, adding that “we need a collective approach ensuring full dissemination and communication on parallel initiatives and opportunities available in the Mediterranean”.

HOMERe internships will start being implemented in 2018 in the accountancy sector under the leadership of the Federation of Mediterranean Certified Accountants (FCM), building on the experience already aquired by the consortium in promoting quality internships across the Mediterranean in the IT, tourism and marketing sectors. The project also ambitions to expand to the maritime, automative and aeronautics sectors in the near future.

The governance of the project gets consolidated with the legal creation of HOMERe national committees in France, Italy and Morocco and the launching of a Business Club with the purpose to give the voice of employers and companies in the strategic orientations of the project. HOMERe Business Club aims in particular at facilitating cooperation and peer-learning among companies hosting young people for HOMERe internships as well as reporting on eventual skills mismatch which may occur during internships.

HOMERe – High Opportunity for Mediterranean Executive Recruitment is a project labelled by the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) under the Med4Jobs Initiative, which promotes student internships to help young people avoid skills mismatch on the labour market and create more opportunities for youth mobility between Algeria, Egypt, France, Greece, Italy, Lebanon, Morocco, Spain and Tunisia.