UNRWA strengthens the employability of Palestinian refugee graduates in the UAE

Mr. Jihad Marouf, Placement and Career Guidance Assistant (Education Department at Lebanon Field Office, UNRWA) and head of delegation, comments:

'It is always a pleasure for me to visit the UAE on business or visiting. On this particular occasion, thanks to the generous contribution of SDC, we are here to meet with several prominent Emirati companies who are interested in our initiative and are willing to support this cause. Young Palestinian graduates have a lot to offer any national business, and our growing databanks contain serious candidates with majors in the most common burgeoning business sectors.'

The initiative focuses on improving the job opportunities of Palestinian graduates in the Gulf region and has been going for decades.

Similar programs and projects have taken place previously, however, these initiatives where on an ad hoc basis and lacked the professional networking and HR development necessary.

In today's demanding markets require an emphasis on vocational training, CV/resume writing and submission, career guidance/counseling, visas and travel arrangement and on-job-training/internship.

'We already have numerous success stories in helping young Palestinians develop their professional careers in the UAE. Nevertheless, we do hope to keep increasing our presence and visibility as well as our training programs, which will benefit the Palestinian refugees as well as the local human resources,' added Mr. Marouf.

'The UNRWA has set out with a specific mission and goal for this UAE visit. Our goals include: exploring and evaluating new job opportunities, promoting university graduates of all majors, collecting feedback from companies regarding the performance of our graduates, collecting feedback from our graduates regarding the difficulties/facilities and opportunities they faced during their work experience, improving communication with targeted UAE companies so that we can allow the graduates to prove their capabilities, skills and professionalism.'

UNRWA's vocational UAE-tour will end on Thursday 17th July 2008.