Background on the pilot project rolling out the KAB programme in Costa Rica. The document is in Spanish. For more information contact the country focal point.

Making Cents International is organising the Global Youth Enterprise Conference in Washington D.C. on 29-30 September  at George Washington University. The conference will see a diverse range of participants that are working to promote youth employment and youth entrepreneurship across the world. There is a growing growing community committed to investing in young people, and the innovations necessary to ensure programs and policies achieve greater impact, sustainability, and scale.

The ILO is organising a session on the experiencs and lessons learned from the implementation of the Know About Business (KAB) entrepreneurship education programme. Joni Simpson, Klaus Haftendorn and Jens Dyring Christensen, along with a young entrepreneur from Syria who participated in the KAB programme in Syria, will talk about how to make the entrepreneurship educaion case to policy makers and the importance of introducing entrepreneurship into general education.

For more information about the conference and the programme visit www.youthenterpriseconference.org

Under the framework of the Entrepreneurial Learning project, 2 KAB Training of Facilitators Workshops were jointly held by the ETF, UNESCO and ILO to train teachers coming from vocational education and general education on the delivery of KAB in classrooms. Both workshops were held at the Padova Hotel in Lebanon and the opening ceremony of both workshops was attended by Mr. Soubhi Abou Chahine, Advisor to the Minister of Education and Higher Education in Lebanon; Ms. Rania Bikhazi, Enterprise Development Specialist, ILO Regional Office for Arab states; Mr. Abdelaziz Jouani, Specialist in Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Skills-Country Manager, ETF; Mr. Oussama Ghneim,CERD,Ministry of Education and Higher Education, Lebanon; and Mr. Sulieman Sulieman, Programme Specialist, Technical and Vocational Education, UNESCO.

The first workshop workshop that targeted general education teachers, was facilitated by Mr. Samih Jaber, KAB Regional Key Facilitator. The workshop was held from August 27 till September 1st, 2012 and was a mixture of the first 4 KAB modules and material from the economics curriculum taught in classes. As it is the first time KAB material is piloted in general education in the Arab region, this experience will be highly informative and beneficial and will be a stepping stone for the integration of KAB in general education. The workshop was attended by 22 teachers (both men and women) and 5 supervisors from the Ministry of Education and Higher Education who will later be monitoring the delivery of KAB in classrooms during the 2012-2013 academic year.

The second workshop that targeted vocational education teachers, was facilitated by Mr. Wael Ghosn and Mr. Ahmed Abdulbary, KAB Regional Key Facilitators from Lebanon and Yemen respectively. The workshop was held from August 27 till September 7, 2012 and was attended by 25 teachers (men and women) and 3 supervisors who will be monitoring the delivery of KAB in classrooms during the 2012-2013 academic year.

During the training workshops teachers were exposed to KAB's participatory teaching techniques and learned to implement them by delivering micro teaching sessions. Teachers also got to play all KAB Games and were handed a KAB Games Guide that  was compiled for the Arab region to ensure game techniques and lessons learned are standardized across the region. Teachers were also given a brief introduction on the decent work and green topics that will be added in the 2013 KAB Arabic package.

After finally having attended a KAB Trainig of Facilitators' Workshop I can say it is an amazing experience which creates a unique KAB Family over a 1-2 week period. KAB Key Facilitators and teachers alike learn from each other and develop their business and training skills in a friendly and fun atmosphere.

Since pictures speak louder than words, you can check out the interactive and fun atmosphere the teachers from Lebanon lived over 1-2 weeks in the attached photos.

An evaluation of the KAB project Phase I in Palestine was done by Mr. Chris Weinmann accompanied by Ms. Rania Bikhazi, Enterprise Development Specialist.

The evaluation started in Amman where a meeting was held with the KAB Regional Key Facilitator, Mr. Samih Jaber, who was the lead expert working on the KAB project. Mr. Jaber gave a detailed presentation of the activities he conducted under the project namely the TOFs, refresher courses, and the NKF workshop. He also clarified the specificities of the teachers’ certification process in Palestine which included attending the NKF workshop, a written test on the KAB content and the delivery of a full TOF under ILO monitoring.

Over 3 days, Mr. Weinmann and Ms. Bikhazi held meetings with the MoL and the MoEHE. They met with the Minister of Labour who spoke highly of the KAB programme as a means to bridge the gap between vocational education and the labour market needs. Follow-up meetings were held with the National KAB Coordinator Mr. Abdullah Al Silawi and the 5 recently certified KAB National Key Facilitators (NKFs).

The NKFs highlighted the need to review the pre and post tests of the KAB programme, simplify it and train the teachers on how to analyze the results. They also focused on the need to provide KAB teachers with incentives in order to motivate them and keep up their enthusiasm.

A meeting was held with the Director General of Technical Education at the MoEHE who also expressed the Ministry’s full support of the programme which will be rolled out nationally starting January 2011. He also stressed on the need to involve the administration and principals of schools and colleges to ensure full understanding of the programme and the provision of the needed support to the teachers.

A long meeting was held with the National KAB Coordinator under the MoEHE and 5 out of the 8 potential NKFs. The latter raised a number of issues namely:

• · Who can assess the business plans submitted by students?
• · Analysis of the pre and post questionnaires
• · Who will assess the KAB impact once the MoEHE will nationalize?
• · Incentives for teachers and NKFs who will train other teachers.

A number of success stories were presented to the evaluators such as newly opened coffee shops, furniture shops and car mechanics especially in the Hebron area.

Mr. Weinmann also held additional meetings with UNDP, DFID to get to know the portfolio of private sector and SME development initiatives in Palestine along with a meeting with the previous KAB coordinator.