"I was sent to enhance youth employment in sustainable business, increase entrepreneurship and business skills by training on business skill enhancing coordination with various providing training value chain etc..." (Samuel)
Samuel Yenesew and Betelehem Fikre Beyene set out to support the Rural Job Opportunity Creation Directorate in Ethiopia to help create jobs in a sustainable environment and provide guidance in how to become successful in a competitive world.
It soon became apparent that the Ethiopian Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resources's directorate did not have a proper format for reporting, monitoring and evaluating their work. Together Samuel and Betelehem created one!
They did so by incorporating all the different actors’ viewpoints, creating a very comprehensive guideline.
"What I did was after I developed the logical framework by myself based on their strategy and plan of action which was collected from each regional state. It was then followed by a meeting / dissection with each supervisor to see if the logical framework represented what they really wanted to see."(Betelehem).
For Betelehem, this was the first time she worked for a governmental institution in Ethiopia, which she found challenging but enriching:
"The main challenge for me was communication is based on hierarchy. Sometimes it makes the communication little bit difficult because it's hard to knowing who is responsible for what in order to access information easily. Other than that people try to be cooperative in any way they can."
Samuel adopted another technic, having had more experience in the field.
"The culture is top down structure so need to use horizontal and bottom up structure as well which will help them to gain more information in order to be productive, I used informal ways of getting information by having coffee with colleges"(Samuel)
Despite these adjustments, both participants had a positive experience and believe that their work had a significant impact on Ethiopia - their country of origin. For this reason, although their assignment has come to an end, they are dedicated to the cause and going to continue the good work by establishing an Ethiopian diaspora association in the Netherlands to enable the acquisition of equipment and materials lacking in the Ministry.
On November 16th, Betelehem will take part in a crowdfunding workshop – provided by IOM Netherlands – to kickstart the initiative!
"I believe supporting this kind of project is the important aspects of IOM work. Since one of the primary reasons for migrants to live their home country is economic factors such as poverty, unemployment and lack of livelihood opportunity." (Betelehem)
Samuel on his part is looking to go on another assignment with the Ministry:
"As I studied consultancy and entrepreneurship and have a background in business management, (I wanted to participate by helping to create jobs) I was sent to enhance youth employment in sustainable business, increase entrepreneurship and business skills by preparing a business framework to be used for training purpose which led to a feasibility study industry and business analyses in Agricultural sector to the Rural job opportunity creation Directorate in Ethiopia Ministry of Agriculture in order to help create jobs in a sustainable environment and provide guidance in how to become successful in a competitive world. The first 3 months of the project were successful, in the next 3 months, I want to achieve more results by implementing the project. I personally want to see the results of this assignment by participating either in person to implement the project for the next 3 months. I want to see the results or outcome of the project I started and see more jobs being created" (Samuel)
