We Discovered We Can Do Anything

For the past decade, Soraya Salti has been the driving force behind INJAZ Al-Arab, the MENA affiliate of Junior Achievement Worldwide based in Jordan. Since she took the helm as regional director, INJAZ has instilled a culture of entrepreneurialism and business innovation in half a million youth in 14 Arab countries by mobilizing volunteers from 700 companies to mentor classroom teams of high school and university students and train them in business related skills. Despite this achievement, the sheer size of the problem INJAZ is addressing is overwhelming. Regional youth unemployment rates already hover between 25%-40%, with an additional 100 million youth expected to join the labour market over the next decade.

Against this backdrop, a youth-led movement has been sweeping across the region since February 2011, catching nearly everyone by surprise, creating, as Soraya puts it, “a new sense of empowerment among youth”. Acutely aware that this is a defining moment for Arab youth, she and her team are quietly putting together a strategy to help INJAZ “rise to the monumental challenge” before them. Katherine Milligan, Head of MENA at the Schwab Foundation, sat down last week for a Q&A session with Soraya. Below are excerpts of their conversation.

Katherine Milligan:  This is such a historical moment for the region, with cause for both great hope and deep concern, and you are right in the middle of it. Let’s talk hope first. In recent weeks you’ve been to Algeria, Syria, the UAE, Egypt, Lebanon, and Jordan. What are young people saying in your conversations with them? What are the larger implications of the youth-led demonstrations we’re seeing in country after country?

Soraya Salti: The revolution has created a shift in the mindset of this generation. Before, youth thought the government owed them a job, which was our biggest obstacle. We were trying to get them to be entrepreneurial, while they were thinking, “But where’s my government job? The state owes it to me!” Then all of a sudden, they blew off the government and there’s no grandfather to count on anymore. Now their future is their responsibility…Now they’re testing ideas and launching companies with INJAZ because they realize there’s no other way.

I’ve talked with young people and seen them on the streets. One placard read “I want to work. Where are you, Mr. President?” Another said “I’ve been waiting 8 years for a job. Where is it?” One young woman told me, “We can’t compete in the modern world. The education system is failing us, and we had no chance to escape it. I grew up in a world where I believed I couldn’t do anything.  Then in just a few weeks, we discovered we can do anything!”

These kids didn’t ask for their parents’ permission, or the government’s, which is very patriarchal. They just did it.

KM:  Now for the concern part. Clearly expectations are unrealistically high about how quickly meaningful changes can be made to address some of these structural problems. What worries you most about the Arab Spring?

Soraya Salti: Two million youth are entering the labor market to unemployment every year. That will be 10 million a year by 2015.  While countries appear eager for educational reform, we haven’t seen a real reform process take hold yet. Given the urgency at hand, I’m sure that governments will soon become bold enough to tackle reform.

New models and approaches must emerge, and partnerships must be formed with the private sector to scale up vocational education, higher education, and job creation. As the dust settles from the Arab Spring, people are going to start saying, “Let’s tackle educational reform now.” “Let’s talk to the private sector to get a sense of what they think we need to do to create more jobs.”

KM:  Much has been made about the importance of social media as a political and organizing tool in the youth-led demonstrations. Will it continue to have a role in the reform process moving forward?

Soraya Salti: Social media is something new in the equation and governments are slow to understand the dynamics of it. We, too, were slow to understand it, and missed an opportunity. We believed that youth weren’t connected, and they proved us wrong. We fell into the same trap about rescuing ‘voiceless Arab youth’. They turned out to be more capable, more computer literate, more vocal than anyone expected! They think and operate in a whole different manner, and we’re not as comfortable as they are in that environment.

So one of the things we’re asking ourselves right now at INJAZ is how to make the shift to join youth as partners, not as top-down trainers anymore. If we give them ideas, they’ll try them out – without needing to be trained. So how do we empower them, using their platforms of communication and their ways of existence, instead of the traditional way of doing things?

KM: Clearly the issue of the youth bulge and the imperative of job creation is now front and center on the agenda. As a leading voice on this issue, your office must be flooded with calls and requests. How proactive are governments in tackling this issue?  

Soraya Salti: Governments are calling on us, but it’s a strange call to action. If you look deeper into their policies, they have little intent to act.  At conferences and in reports, for example, everyone says the Arab Spring is a call to action and that we have to act decisively because if we don’t, the stability of the region is at stake. But what about governments’ responsibility to implement reforms, so these decisive actions can get moving?

We’re crippled by the lack of legal frameworks in the region. INJAZ still can’t register as a legal entity in many countries, because non-profits don’t have legal status. These countries want NGOs to help, but NGOs can’t register. This is our biggest impediment.

KM: It’s hard to generalize about the types of economic reforms needed to improve competitiveness, incentivize SME creation, and stimulate job growth in countries ranging from Egypt to Jordan to Tunisia, where economies and political dynamics are quite different. But in your point of view, what are the top policy priorities that governments in the region must focus on to make a dent in this problem?

Soraya Salti: Number one, the legal status of civil society. Allow civil society to operate effectively so it can be a strong player in the equation. Governments don’t know how to work with the private sector on education, and vice versa. They need a middleman to broker that link.

To bridge the disconnect between what students are taught at school and what they need to join the private sector, we must give them skills that fill the human resource needs of our growth industries. We have 100 million youth aged 15-29. Another 100 million are below the age of 15. So we’re dealing with two mega-waves of youth coming into the labour force. Even if growth industries are moving at an accelerated pace, there’s no way to absorb these numbers.

So we need to give youth the tools to create jobs for themselves, to start their own companies, and employ others in the process. But in many countries bankruptcy means going to jail. How can you incentivize them to create start-ups, when if they fail, they go to jail? Not to mention the lack of access to funding.  Or the poor rankings of Arab countries on the Ease of Doing Business Index – we’re above 100 in nearly every case.
[NB Out of 183 countries total, Egypt is ranked 94, Yemen 105, Jordan 111, Lebanon 113, Morocco 114, West Bank 135, Algeria 136, and Syria 144.]

Some governments have responded by raising salaries. Billions of dollars are being spent to increase the salaries of public sector workers. But that doesn’t touch the unemployed. Those funds could have been used more productively for job training, seed capital, and job creation instead!

KM:  What does all of this mean for INJAZ? What’s your strategic plan for the next 18-24 months and beyond to respond to these game-changing events?

 

Soraya Salti: We’re completing the cycle of entrepreneurship education with start-up creation, and moving online and to TV. We can reach more youth by empowering them to do things on their own and by influencing the culture.

 The economic situation in Egypt is dire. So INJAZ-Egypt is shifting to begin funding start-ups. We’ll turn our annual company competitions for university students into an entrepreneurship marketplace where the student businesses can be matched with incubators and angel investors. Those real-life, but not yet registered, companies that can demonstrate that they have what it takes will be matched with corporations who will mentor them through the first few years until they get on their feet. Each company must make a three-year plan and we’ll select the most promising ones. If it works in Egypt, we’ll roll it out across the Arab world.

We’ve also been putting our heads together to figure out how to leverage our partnerships and create content that youth can use in a cost-effective way. There are no boundaries anymore. Jordanian youth can’t get a visa to Saudi, but they’re connected with Saudi youth online. The only way we can meet the demands of this generation is through an online strategy. Our present model can only grow 20-30% a year, and that’s a stretch, but it doesn’t come close to meeting the needs of 100 million!

This is a huge strategic push for us. We’re drawing up a portal to connect youth to everything that’s out there. So how do we arabize, and localize, the tools to help them start successful businesses?  How can we use our access to CEOs, and all their employees across the region, to guide youth to their best career options – to careers needed by the private sector?

Most exciting of all, we’re filming a reality TV series on entrepreneurship to get the community on board.  Our pilot episodes will be in Egypt, where we’ll follow young people around as they try to get their businesses off the ground. We’ve raised $500,000 so far, and are in discussions with pan-Arab TV networks. Our first pilot episode will be aired this December inshallah, and the rest in the fall of 2012.

So that’s the vision.  Scale up.  Move online. Get on TV. Inspire youth and change the conversation!