As part of its regional response strategy to the COVID-19 pandemic, the UfM has launched a 2020 Employment Promotion Grant Scheme aimed at improving the employment situation, particularly in the countries of the southern and eastern Mediterranean. In order to present the work accomplished and the lessons learned by the awarded projects, the closing ceremony of the UfM grants program for the promotion of employment was organized at the headquarters of the Union for the Mediterranean in Barcelona on 14 July 2022, bringing together multiple stakeholders and partners from both shores of the Mediterranean.
The first edition of the grant scheme, supported by German Development Cooperation, reflects the determination of the Union for the Mediterranean to respond to the economic crisis at regional, national and local levels, improving the employment situation of citizens as well as the business environment of entrepreneurs and VSEs-SMEs.
The closing ceremony was marked by speeches by Emmanuelle Roure, team leader at the European Commission’s DG Employment; Regine Qualmann, Head of Division for North Africa at the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ); María Helena de Felipe Lehtonen, President of the Federation of Associations of Mediterranean Businesswomen (AFAEME) and Nasser Kamel, Secretary General of the UfM. They all stressed the need to support and promote the growth of VSEs-SMEs in the Euro-Mediterranean region, with a focus on young people and women-led businesses.
Representatives of the 4 projects, namely FLOWER (Fostering local market opportunities for strengthening women’s resilience and leadership); AMDT (Mediterranean Alliance for Sustainable Tourism following the COVID-19 pandemic), RISE (Resilience and Innovation through strengthening entrepreneurship), SEARChED (Strengthening employment and entrepreneurship to recover from the damage caused by the epidemic of Covid-19) also presented the main results and lessons of their projects, which benefited a total of 18,000 people, mainly women, young people, social enterprises and VSEs-SMEs in Greece, Italy, Jordan, Lebanon, Malta, Morocco and Tunisia.
