MNCs craft CSR initiatives to address unemployment

Ritika Sharma / Emirates Business

As the youth unemployment rate reaches nearly27 percent in the Middle East region, leading Multi-National Companies (MNCs) take on the responsibility to find a full-bodied panacea to this recurring problem.
Working in this direction, MNCs, which are active in this region, are very strategically channeling their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities towards enhancing the youth skills and enhancing their skill-sets to match the requirements of the job market.
Aiming to develop careers that improve the lives of employable youngsters, MNCs are opening up for more internships and career development programmes for the youth of this region.
Sagar Malhotra, who works with a HR solutions company in Dubai, told Emirates Business, “Multi-national companies have their commitment towards a better society in form of CSR and it becomes essential for them to address the needs of the particular geographic area they are operating in. Experts have identified unemployment as one of the main social problems of the region and that’s the reason it becomes important to address it with urgency.”
“Middle East has headquarters of almost all the leading MNCs and if more and more such global companies take up the responsibility to empower the youth, it will not take more than five years to reduce the percentage of unemployed youth in the region,” he added.
On the same lines, Nestlé Middle East is mobilising a movement wherein it is calling upon the companies that are determined to play a positive role in getting young people opportunities for internships, career advancement and professional training.
Yves Manghardt, Nestle Middle East Chairman and CEO, said in a recent official statement, “We are calling for an Alliance for Youth in the Middle East because we know from experience in other regions that our efforts can have a bigger social impact through partnerships and collaboration.”
In the past five years, Nestle Middle East has recruited more than 1,700 young people under 30 years of age. Today, one third of its employees in the region constitute young population.
ASDA’A Burson-Marsteller’s Arab Youth Survey has also pointed out towards the growing problem of unemployment among youths in the region stating that there are 200 million young people in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region trying to make a successful career for which they need real time working opportunities with big companies.
Industry experts say that it is necessary for the MNCs to involve local youths in their CSR activities and give them big responsibility in a bid to bring out the future leader out of them.