Reintegration assistance: Good, Promising and Innovative Practices Series. A new factsheet on boosting returnees’ employment through support to SMEs in Iraq produced by the Knowledge Management Hub
Owner of Al-Miqdad Chips Factory, a project supported by EDF in Mosul © IOM
The Knowledge Management Hub is releasing today a new factsheet on boosting returnees’ employment through support to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Iraq as part of the “Reintegration Assistance: Good, Promising and Innovative Practices” series.
Returnees employment can be supported through individual skills development and job matching activities. It can also be fostered by structurally creating jobs. In Iraq, IOM has implemented the Enterprise Development Fund (EDF) since 2018 to support rapid, large-scale private sector job creation and economic recovery through tailored support to SMEs. EDF is a financing mechanism that provides SMEs with financial capital to contribute to their recovery and/or expansion while at the same time contributing to improve employment avenues for returnees and other target groups.
The newly released factsheet “Practice #9: Boosting returnees’ employment through support to SMEs in Iraq” describes the articulated process established to select and support beneficiary SMEs and highlights the importance of conducting market assessments and applying a due diligence process to select beneficiaries. It also presents evidence on the positive outcomes of this mechanism, including on the number and sustainability of jobs created, as well as on the wider economic recovery in target areas. Finally, since this mechanism can relatively easily be adapted to a wide range of contexts, this factsheet also provides recommendations for practitioners interested in designing and implementing a similar initiative.
This series of factsheets aims at highlighting good or promising reintegration practices along with operational details and recommendations allowing reintegration practitioners to learn more about such activities, understand how they are implemented and could potentially be replicated or adapted in their respective contexts. The other factsheets of the series are available on the Platform’s repository.
Do not hesitate to get in touch with us and share good and promising practices on reintegration assistance. The information and evidence collected on such practices is translated into short knowledge bites in the form of factsheets for easy dissemination among reintegration practitioners.
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