ILO trains more women as entrepreneurship education facilitators in Saudi Arabia

Women teachers were certified as national facilitators in the ILO’s “Know About Business” (KAB) Programme, after KAB was introduced as an elective course at the Technical Vocational Training Corporation.

Article | 12 April 2018
Under the framework of a joint project between the ILO and Saudi Arabia’s National Entrepreneurship Institute (Riyadah), the women’s unit of Riyadah requested a refresher workshop to train women teachers from the Technical Vocational Training Corporation (TVTC) as facilitators for the ILO’s Know About Business (KAB) programme.

The joint project introduced entrepreneurship education to the TVTC, and the new Governor of Vocational Training Dr. Ahmed El Fhid decided to provide KAB as an elective course at the TVTC.

With the assistance of two TVTC KAB teachers, ILO Regional Enterprise Specialist for Arab States Rania Bikhazi conducted the workshop at the TVTC Teacher Training Center from 11-15 March. It was attended by a total of 24 women teachers who had previously taught the KAB programme to students.

Throughout the workshop, the teachers were very committed and participated with a high level of interest and enthusiasm. They shared experiences and presented challenges faced and lessons learned from the implementation. An exam was administered to ensure participants were fully knowledgeable with the content of the programme. On the final day, Dr. Hanan Jweid, Assistant Riyadah CEO for women, addressed the participants and distributed KAB National Facilitator certificates to 23 women who successfully completed the programme requirements.

The promising collaboration between ILO and Riyadah aims to foster an entrepreneurship culture in the Kingdom through the nationalization and implementation of the KAB programme in the TVTC. The next steps entail building the capacity of two women facilitators as KAB National Key Facilitators (NKFs) in the coming months, to ensure the sustainability of the programme in the women’s section of the TVTC.

The ILO Know About Business (KAB) Programme is a global entrepreneurship programme, which introduces entrepreneurship education at secondary, vocational and higher education levels, encouraging young people to consider self-employment as a career path and to work more productively in enterprises. The KAB programme’s wide success and positive impact on students’ mindset lies in its digression from traditional training and teaching techniques and its use of modern participatory ones.

The immediate objectives of the KAB training programme are to:
  • Create awareness of enterprise and self-employment as a career option for youth.
  • Develop positive attitudes towards enterprises and self-employment among youth.
  • Provide knowledge and practice of the required attributes and challenges for starting and operating a successful and sustainable enterprise that provides a decent work environment for workers.
  • Facilitate the school-to-work transition by developing entrepreneurial skills and traits among youth, which prepares them to work productively in SMEs.
The KAB programme was first introduced at the TVTC in the Kingdom in 2011 targeting the men’s section, where over a period of 5 years a total of 143 men teachers were trained on its content and teaching techniques. To date, no certification of KAB men teachers has taken place. In 2012, the first KAB Training of Women Facilitators was held and was followed by two others in 2015 using the new updated version of the KAB Programme, leading to a total of 74 TVTC women teachers trained on the programme. Given the changes that occurred in the training programme of the TVTC, the ILO was only able to certify the first 23 women who completed the certification requirements on 15 March, 2018.