EUSEEDS Project
The EUSEEDS project (Enable, Upgrade and Spread Employability, Entrepreneurship, and Digital Skills of Eastern Mediterranean Youth through Dedicated University Centers), led by AUF, is co-funded by the European Union under the Interreg NEXT MED program.
The project is implemented by a balanced consortium of seven partners across six countries, including four regional partners (Enroot in Egypt; Jordan Youth Innovation Forum in Jordan; Forward Mena in Lebanon; Palestine Information and Communication Technology Incubator in Palestine) and two European partners (Center for Social Innovation in Cyprus and Aix-Marseille University in France).
With an average unemployment rate of 40.5% among higher-education graduates, the non-EU countries where the project is deployed face a significant shared challenge. The project aims to partly address this by developing cross-sectoral skills, rarely acquired yet essential for professional integration, in employability, digital skills, and entrepreneurship.
OBJECTIVES
The EUSEEDS project aims to establish 20 university centers across five Eastern Mediterranean countries (Cyprus, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Palestine) to strengthen young people’s employability and digital skills.
The project seeks to improve youth access to employment through the acquisition of digital and transferrable skills aligned with labor-market needs, as well as through support for self-entrepreneurship. It enables large-scale development of training capacities, pre-incubation of student projects, and strengthened exchange of experiences, expertise, and transnational cooperation among organizations.
IMPACT
By the end of the project:
- Final beneficiaries, students and recent graduates from the 20 universities, will receive training each year (an estimated annual flow of 4,100 people). They will acquire skills previously lacking, with a significant improvement in their employability and professional integration. Student entrepreneurs, protected by a national status, will be supported up to the pre-incubation phase of their projects.
- Vulnerable groups will gain access to training that either provides them with basic digital literacy or equips them with professional skills that are immediately marketable.