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GCP/INT/240/ITA Youth mobility, food security and rural poverty reduction: Fostering rural diversification through enhanced youth employment and better labour mobility (RYM)

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GCP/INT/240/ITA Youth mobility, food security and rural poverty reduction: Fostering rural diversification through enhanced youth employment and better labour mobility (RYM)

5 July 2017, El Kef-Tejerouine, Tunisia - Said Touety.
Said is a sheep breeder who lives in northwestern Tunisia with his 90-year-old mother in Tajerouine, Governorate of El Kef, a dry and remote area on the border with Algeria. ?This area is isolated and half of its population left, but I stayed,? Said says. In 2016, Said was selected along with more than forty other young people to be part of the FAO Rural Youth Mobility project.
Despite a university degree in mathematics, Said was unemployed for 12 years. He says he liked working with livestock, which he'd learned from his father, but raising sheep required resources and ?my financial situation was not good.? Said was ready to migrate to Italy, following other men from his community. More than 1.2 million Tunisians live abroad ? about 1 in 10 people.
?But I decided to stay in my country and my land. I live with my mother and I am the breadwinner in the house. I cannot leave her alone,? he says with tears in his eyes.
Thanks to the FAO project, Said learned how to run an organic sheep farm and received a herd of 55 sheep. ?I had lost hope due to the unemployment in the region, but the FAO project gave me a chance,? Said said. His cousin also helped, by sharing some of his own land for use by Said in sheep breeding. Now Said has the option to earn a living in his own community and migration no longer feels like the only viable pathway out of poverty.
?I want to have a lot of livestock and hire a lot of workers to give opportunities to my people.?

GCP/INT/240/ITA Youth mobility, food security and rural poverty reduction: Fostering rural diversification through enhanced youth employment and better labour mobility (RYM)
Objectives:
1) Improved knowledge and awareness on how to harness the potential of migration and economic mobility to promote youth employement in agriculture.
2)Improved policy coherence to better manage rural migration and facilitate opportunities for rural use in agriculture through seasonal migration and agro-entrepreneurship in Tunisia.
3) Improved policy coherence to better manage rural migration and facilitate opportunities for rural use in agriculture through seasonal migration and agro-entrepreneurship in Ethiopia.

07/04/2016

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