The first year of “Future Skills and Jobs for Armenia’s Rural Youth” project is fast approaching its end, and we have reached many important milestones during 2019.

One of those milestones was to conduct Entrepreneurship trainings for the youth of four targeted regions of the project, Lori, Shirak, Gegharkunik and Tavush.

The decision to organize specifically these types of trainings was made based on the research results conducted by researcher, Nelli Minasyan, in her “Labor Market Mapping in Lori, Shirak, Tavush and Gegharkunik regions of Armenia.” The research findings were astonishing, as we found out some interesting facts and statistical information that was surprising for us as well. Majority of unemployed in regions are within the age group of 18 to 34. Youth is the most vulnerable segment to employment market uncertainty.

2018 data for unemployment in regions has a breakdown of professions. One of the least successful employment paths is for those who have professional education in Economics or Humanities. Data from the same year, shows that majority of vacancies in the region require jobs in wholesale, retail trade and service sectors. Such a mismatch is supported by path dependency, where the “society” considers certain professions as prestigious educational opportunities.

Starting their own businesses, and building something successful out of it was, however, the one common line that was noticed to be demand in all four regions. The youth is interested in creating their own, learning something new to provide for themselves and their families and to support the economic growth.

The choice was already made, now our job was to find competent professionals who would give these hands-on skills to the interested youth.

Hovhannes Yeritsyan (Ph.D.) was the lead trainer in our trainings, who is an experienced professional in innovation management and business development fields. Hovhannes is also the business development director at Seaside Startup Summit, a platform built for accomplished and raising entrepreneurs and investors, a non-formal startup event that gathers all likeminded people together for idea pitching, knowledge sharing and winning grants or getting investments. They are very popular with their Sevan Startup Summits that were taking place since 2016.

Along with Hovhannes, his partner, Arshak Karapetyan, a skilled business consultant also conducted the trainings. Both Arshak and Hovhannes are co-founders of Nation in Action initiative, a non-formal educational, entrepreneurship and professional development platform for the youth the goal of which is to support its stakeholders and become a change agent on the national and local economic levels.

Hovhannes and Arshak provided very detailed presentations and conducted working sessions in each region. The groups varied based on the region and it was interesting to see the pattern and interest changes of each area. Some of the participants came with actual business models that are currently active, with an ambition to grow and learn new methods to make their businesses more successful. The others, however, came with much less knowledge and personal goals to build their own business in a specific field.

Even though the participants were in completely different stages at their businesses, the trainers were well equipped to give everyone the information and skills each one needed.

Overall, the entrepreneurship trainings were an important stage at our project and we are happy that we were able to give such opportunity to the interested youth right there in their regions.

Stay tuned to learn what are our goals for the next year to see how the Future Skills project is developing.