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Amideast’s Alexandria office worked with underserved, unemployed, and underemployed university graduates from the Damanhour area to expand the program’s impact beyond Egypt’s major cities. The 2020 Skills for Success participants completed 280 hours of personal development and professional skills training, complemented with practical internships and mentoring. They proved to themselves, their families, and their communities that opportunities exist even in the most difficult circumstances.

Colleagues,

I know most of you are deeply troubled, as am I, by the recent murders of several of our fellow African-American citizens at the hands of the police or vigilantes. If there is any advantage to being older, it is the ability to place recent events in the context of what you have witnessed over the course of your life.

In early April, the YES Consortium held its second global Virtual Alumni Leaders Training (VALT) for more than 50 alumni of the Kennedy-Lugar Youth Exchange and Study (YES) program! VALT provided an opportunity for this select group of former exchange students, now back in their home countries, to further develop their leadership and communication skills, as well as network with their fellow alumni.

The program, part of the Citi Foundation’s Global Pathways to Progress Initiative and a larger grant that also features Amideast-implemented programs in Egypt and the UAE, has focused on preparing a new generation of Saudi youth to enter and succeed in today’s job market by helping them develop skills critical for workplace success.

Designed and implemented by Amideast, the Skills for Success program served unemployed Lebanese technical and university education graduates aged 20-24 living in four regions of Lebanon: Tripoli and neighboring towns in North Lebanon, Rachaya and Hasbaya in South Lebanon, the Aley region in Mount Lebanon, and the greater Beirut region. The program provided intensive training on personal development, professional skills, workplace experience, and career guidance to enable the young participants to select and successfully follow a path of employability or entrepreneurship.

The purchase of the former home of the U.S. Consulate in Alexandria completes a process underway since September 2016, when Amideast began to rent the facility.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Ambassador to Egypt, Jonathan Cohen, visited the center, which is well known locally as an architectural gem that holds historical and cultural significance for many Alexandrians — a legacy that Amideast is committed to honoring by preserving its structural integrity and respecting its importance to the community.

The Tunisian and Libyan alumni came from the far corners of their home countries. Also attending were staff members from Amideast’s headquarters and Amideast/Tunisia, who organized the event, and David Blome, the U.S. ambassador to Tunisia and former chargé d’affaires to Libya.

Amideast field offices hosted a number of events during IEW 2019, including:

The Youth Entrepreneurship Program II renews Citi Foundation’s commitment to supporting Amideast’s Skills for Success initiative to target underserved youth in Egypt. It is part of Citi Foundation’s Pathways to Progress global approach designed to prepare urban youth with the career-readiness tools and opportunities required to thrive in today’s economy.

MCC CEO Sean Cairncross and Ivanka Trump, senior advisor to the president of the United States, announced $6.2 million of grant funding through Morocco’s Millennium Challenge Account during their visit to Morocco in early November. These funds will provide employability training to around 8,300 individuals, 70 percent of them women, and benefit around 6,300 others through a combination of training, recruitment, and coaching services that will facilitate their access to the job market.