Stock-EFE-Event
EFE executives (L-R): Europe CEO of EFE Ana Martiningui; the President and CEO Andrew Baird; UAE Managing Director Dima Najim; and Senior Vice-President - Strategy, Partnerships and Communications, Jasmine Nahhas Di Florio, at the Dubai event Image Credit: Supplied

Dubai: The Education For Employment (EFE), a youth employment focused organization, has reached the milestone of 130,000 graduates, which was marked with an event held in Dubai.

“Despite the challenging economy in 2021, we have had a graduation rate of 93 per cent placing 75 per cent in jobs,” said Andrew Baird, EFE Global’s President and CEO. “We held 437 online and offline classes across the EFE network. Dubai is a central hub for innovation, knowledge, and opportunity, and what better place to highlight this important achievement and invite our partners, CEOs and board members from across the region.”

More than 3,800 employer partners have hired EFE alumni since its inception, including 280 partners in the first three quarters of 2021. In addition, over 80,000 women have graduated through the EFE programme.

“NAMA has been working closely with EFE to fulfil its Network’s ambition to empower thousands of youth, young women in particular, in MENA through education, jobs and entrepreneurship opportunities,” said Reem bin Karam, Director at NAMA Women Advancement Establishment. “The many success stories we have, should be the fuel for us to get together and create more high-impact partnerships, ones that will end the exclusion of youth from conversations that directly impact the opportunities available to them by shifting them from the side-lines and bringing them to the centre of key debates in the region’s sustainable economic development.”

EFE has over 3,000 partners including Accenture, Bank of America, Boeing, Cartier Philanthropy, Chanel Foundation, Citi Foundation, Dell and Google. The founder Ron Bruder was named one of TIME Magazine's 100 Most Influential People in 2011 and a Schwab Foundation Global Social Entrepreneur in 2012.