The first week of February, the prime minister of Belgium – Charles Michel – made an official visit to the Palestinian Territory. As part of his trip, he has visited the Work Based Learning project of the Belgian Development Cooperation in the YMCA in Jericho.

The YMCA in Jericho has been founded in 1952, as a branch of the YMCA in Jerusalem. It is a training centre that especially focuses on marginalised youth from the refugee camps and other disadvantaged areas in the West Bank. The scope of the centre is to offer a vocational training to these young people – providing them with enough skills to find a job afterwards.

The centre focuses specifically on orphans, youth coming from disadvantaged families and backgrounds, traumatized children or people with special needs. Currently the centre counts 35 teachers and 300 students, among which around 50 girls.

The centre offers a wide range of professional training courses, including accounting, cooking, ICT, construction works etc. The courses consist of two parts, for a total of two years. The theoretical part of the training takes place in the YMCA and lasts for 11 months. The second part, the practical training takes place inside the private sector, and lasts for 7 months.

The Belgian Development Cooperation has supported the YMCA since 2008. A first project helped the centre to acquire 80 beds, as to allow the students coming from remote areas to sleep inside the training centre. Furthermore, thanks to the Belgian Development Cooperation, the centre could acquire 15 new computers, now in use as an ICT classroom for the students.

More recently, the centre has been selected for the  Work Based Learning Fund in order to optimise their system of training in the private sector. Research has shown that training in private companies drastically enhances their chances to find a job afterwards. Up to 80% of the students find a job within a year.

Currently, the fund only supports the students who follow the cooking school, but in the future this fund can also cover other professions. The funds help the YMCA to cover the transportation fees of the students going back and forth to the private sector organisations, to buy uniforms for them, to give them a work insurance, buy the tools and raw materials they need during their training etc.

Furthermore, a specific coaching mechanism has been put in place for the teachers and trainers that accompany  the students during their time in the private sector and do the follow-up of their training period.