Two new regional projects labelled by UfM member countries
Barcelona, 4 October 2013. The Senior Officials of the 43 Members States of the UfM approved during the Senior Officials Meeting in Vilnius on 3-4 October, the labeling of two projects to be promoted by the UfM.
The project “Generation Entrepreneur” falls under the “Med4Jobs” initiative and rests on its two components: employability, and new company creation. This programme will provide entrepreneurship and workforce readiness training to youth across the southern and eastern Mediterranean region, with special focus on the creation of and support for youth business enterprises. The project is promoted by INJAZ Al-Arab, a non-profit organization operating in 15 countries across the MENA region.
The project will cover the following countries: Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine and Tunisia. Approximately 79,000 school and university Students from the Southern and Eastern Mediterranean countries involved in the project are to become the expected beneficiaries of the project. In addition, approximately 500 jobs upon successful completion of mentorship, incubation are envisaged through the support of 50 startup enterprises to be funded by the project.
“Generation Entrepreneur” seeks to develop and sustain an environment of entrepreneurship throughout North Africa and the Levant through the up-scaling of INJAZ operations and educational programmes and will be implemented over a period of 3 years. Support will go directly toward INJAZ programmes, which focus on i) general entrepreneurship education, ii) hands-on business training and iii) support for start-up enterprises.
With a view to contributing to the sustainable protection of the Mediterranean Sea, the ‘Integrated Programme for Protection of the Lake Bizerte against Pollution’ will allow to implement sustainable methods of protection and prevention of all sources of pollution “hot spots” that could affect the environmental quality of marine and coastal ecosystems and the quality of life in the region of Bizerte in the North of Tunisia. Connected to the Mediterranean Sea it is also closely situated to natural reserves on land (Ichkeul Park) and in the sea (marine protected areas of Cap Blanc and Cap Serrat) and has been widely accepted for over a decade to be a hotspot of marine pollution of regional impact1 and has been placed at the top of the depollution priorities of the Tunisian government and within the framework of the Euro-Mediterranean initiative Horizon 2020.
With a total budget of over 90 million Euros over a 5-year period (starting in 2014), the project, which is promoted and commissioned by the Ministry of Equipment and Environment of Tunisia, will aim to eliminate the main sources of all kinds of pollution which are contaminating the lake or the bordering populations in order to guarantee a healthy environmental state, to secure a level of quality of life and sustainable urban and economic activities such as agriculture, industry, tourism, aquaculture or fisheries.
