Initiative for economic stabilization and youth employment

Program Designers’ Lab Tunisia

Together with the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), we launched PDL Tunis in March 2018. It took place in three cities: Kasserine, Kairouan, and Gabès. The reason for this was where the regional partner networks exist, the potential of the project ideas submitted by the candidates, as well as their motivation.

In each cohort, a focus group was formed from different actors of the respective entrepreneurial ecosystem. The participants and organizations were nominated and directly selected in close consultation with the local partner organizations. The target group included representatives and managers of relevant organizations such as incubators, accelerators, co-working spaces, civil society actors, donor organizations, and representatives of the state. Subsequently and over the duration of five months and five workshops, the focus groups worked together on ecosystem challenges and their development.

Results

The three cycles in Kasserine, Gabès, and Kairouan, were all implemented successfully. The participants received theoretical input which they afterward applied to their own project ideas.

From project idea, to fund acquisition, tender, and selection of participants, as well as project implementation, marketing, documentation, and monitoring & evaluation — all aspects of program development, were discussed and applied with practical examples, using the design thinking approach.

Thus, participants were able to have their own offer analyzed and adapt it to the needs of the existing ecosystem. This made it possible to improve the impact of their own programs. Half of the workshops were led by international experts.

All the tools, templates, and documents presented and jointly developed were made available in a shared online folder for further use and development. Between the workshops, participants were given tasks to complete. These involved developing recommendations for action to strengthen their business locations and ecosystems.

A total of 21 participants; 3 from Kasserine,  7 from Gabès, and 11 from Kairouan successfully completed the full workshop cycle.

Partners

• GIZ Tunisia 
• APIA
• Cifodcom
• Mashroui
• Various local government actors in the governorates.