ILO trains facilitators in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq on its entrepreneurship education programme - Know About Business
The training is part of wider efforts by the ILO to foster entrepreneurship education, in collaboration with the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs.

The training, which took place in Erbil between July 31 and August 12, brought together sixteen teachers. It is the second KAB Training of Facilitators to be held by the ILO in recent months. The training workshops were also attended by H.E. Kwestan Mohamad Adbulla, Minister of Labour and Social Affairs; Ms. Zakia Sayed Salih, Deputy Minister, and Dr. Arif Hito, Director General of Labour and Social Insurance.
The training programme is being delivered under the framework of ILO’s “Improved Business Development Services and Entrepreneurship Education targeting MSMEs and youth for decent work creation in KRI” project, which is financially supported by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and in partnership with the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ). It is being implemented in close collaboration with the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs (MoLSA) of the Regional Kurdistan Government, ILO’s key partner in the embedment of entrepreneurship curriculum into education and training. On the subject, H.E. Kwestan Mohamad Adbulla, Minister of Labour and Social Affairs, has emphasized her cabinet’s commitment to work closely with the ILO and other organizations in supporting young Kurdish women and men to launch entrepreneurships as a means to tackle youth unemployment.

Know About Business is an entrepreneurship education programme developed by the ILO to teach entrepreneurship in technical and vocational centres, as well as in secondary and higher education institutions. The objective is to create positive attitudes in young women and men towards enterprise as a career option and facilitate the school-work transition as a result of a better understanding of the way enterprises operate.
“Young women and men in particular face great difficulties to find a gainful and decent employment, a situation that is evidenced by the fact that almost half of youth have been looking for a job for more than a year. This situation becomes quite demotivating for youth who are confronted with the lack of job opportunities after graduating” said Daniela Martinez, Enterprise Development Officer for ILO Iraq. “Besides this, the more educated youth still show a strong preference for public sector employment and lack knowledge of the potential benefits of engaging in entreprepreneurship. Our objective is thus to offer youth higher incentives to go into business through the promotion of an entrepreneurship culture and more information on how to open a business”.
