This window focuses on mobilizing human capital for medium to high-skilled jobs in industrial growth sectors, particularly for SMEs in the supply chain of these fast-growing sectors (f.e. automotive, aeronautics, textiles, pharmaceuticals, and agri-businesses). SMEs in key high-value-added sectors require skilled employees to fuel innovation, growth, and competitiveness in the export market. There is potential for a significant impact on job creation, where sector associations have aggressive job creation targets. CFYE also sees an opportunity for male-dominated sectors to remove entry barriers and enhance opportunities for medium to high-skilled women in these sectors.

1. Applications aimed at expanding job opportunities in less developed regions will be regarded favourably during evaluation.
2. Applicants’ use of environmentally sustainable practices, such as renewable energy, and an integrated strategy for social inclusion (for example, working with female-led suppliers or community inclusion) would also be regarded favourably during evaluation.

Examples of project ideas can relate to:

• Create: Implementing partners’ solutions on creating new jobs in these sectors may focus on, for example, creating work opportunities with a managerial or technical focus to make them more attractive to youth. Financial institutions could consider partnering with SMEs by providing access to finance with direct causality of job creation & incentivizing the hiring of Moroccan youth.
• Match: TVETs operating in these sectors or other private matching platforms can partner with SMEs to provide the requisite training skills and match youth to suitable opportunities or design apprenticeship opportunities followed by employment. Note: CFYE will not support training-only projects. Training institutions or matching platforms must partner with private sector companies with confirmed demand for jobs.
• Improve: Solutions in this category will particularly focus on improving the decency or quality of jobs that youth are currently employed in. Project ideas could include: formalising businesses that are currently informal, enabling women to work flexibly, and advancing the decent work agenda for manufacturing employees, focusing on several of the following aspects:

1. Living income/wage, in particular focusing on redressing the gender wage gap by supporting women into jobs in higher-paid sectors and occupations or into senior positions within firms and improving their career prospects in general. This category also includes introducing policies for ensuring workers are compensated for overtime and transportation.

2. Security in the workplace, including physical safety provisions that consider the particular needs of women (e.g., safe transport to and from work, appropriate bathroom facilities) and protection against psychosocial hazards such as sexual harassment or discrimination (e.g., social support systems for workers).

3. Social protection for families, which does not reinforce women’s traditional roles and responsibilities but contributes to the transformation of gender relations in economic and social spheres (e.g., maternity leave, childcare provision, or subsidies for working mothers or single fathers to access childcare).

4. Prospects for personal development and social integration by conducting risk assessments of how a job or a promotion within a job might affect how a worker is perceived and treated in their family and community, and deploying strategies to mitigate against any harm (e.g., community outreach activities to protect women employees against domestic recriminations for working).

Digital business development services using technology to create new value in business models, customer experiences, and the internal capabilities that support its core operations, have high potential to impact jobs at scale (f.e. e-commerce, education, health, finance, creative sector). This window covers e-commerce as well as traditional brick-and-mortar players that are transforming their businesses with digital technologies. There is also good potential for providing opportunities for women, as the work often enables remote work and flexibility in timings. Moreover, as per our scoping research, digitally-enabled jobs align strongly with youth aspirations. While direct digital business models are typically deployed in urban and semi-urban areas, this can also be a viable solution to connect with rural markets.

Examples of project ideas can relate to:

• Create:  Companies can create job opportunities for youth by supplying or using new digital business management tools for B2B service delivery. Another example in this category is companies adopting e-commerce B2C delivery models and providing digital or logistics jobs.
• Match: Matching platforms can partner with SMEs to provide digital skills training and match youth to opportunities with employers that join the consortium. Note: CFYE will not support training-only projects. Training institutions or matching platforms must partner with private sector companies with confirmed demand for jobs.
• Improve: Providing working mothers with access to flexible working arrangements, childcare, safe transportation, etc. Equality of opportunity and treatment, for example, applying a gender and inclusion lens to firms’ HR practices, especially at hiring and promotion stages (avoiding highly masculinised language in job descriptions, avoiding unconscious bias in training, establishing clear evaluation criteria, etc.).