Founder of Education for Employment Ronald Bruder is all about social change and empowerment of youth from the bottom up. With fifty percent growth of their foundation, and having helped twenty six thousand youngsters in the last eight years, Education for Employment functions in Egypt, Jordan, Gaza, Tunisia, Dubai, and Saudi Arabia, educating and training youth for work from local area foundations. Alec caught up with him in Davos to discuss what their growth plan is globally. – CH
ALEC HOGG:  Well, we’re with Ron Bruder who is the Founder of Education for Employment. Here at Davos, new ideas come along. Some people talk. Some people listen. Hopefully, you’ve been doing some talking. You have some new ideas for youth unemployment.
RONALD BRUDER:  We’ve been doing some talking and some listening.
ALEC HOGG: Take us through what it is. Clearly, we know it’s a problem but you have a solution.
RONALD BRUDER: I don’t know that I have a solution, but I have a partial solution. Right now, we have a lot of unrest in the Middle East. I believe that the strongest link between unrests is a lack of prosperity. The fact that we have a young woman and a young man who can’t find a job – they are obviously, led into directions that are not socially beneficial to themselves, the society, or quite frankly, for the globe. What we do is we’re in the Middle East in Egypt, Jordan, Gaza, Tunisia, Dubai, and Saudi. We build local foundations and those local foundations train youths for jobs, focusing primarily on women.
ALEC HOGG:Â How much have you done?
RONALD BRUDER: We’ve graduated around twenty six thousand in the last eight years.
ALEC HOGG: That’s a wonderful story.
RONALD BRUDER: We’ve grown by about 50 percent. During the first few years, we were doing hundreds, thousands, and two thousand and now, the curve has steepened. We’re training thousands but more importantly I think, as we continue to grow, we’ll train systems.
ALEC HOGG:Â What do you train them in?
RONALD BRUDER: Whatever the market needs. I think we have forty two different courses. Our prime course that we teach is work skills. It’s amazing how these kids don’t understand the basics. For example, we have a course that we built that we call ‘work by success’ and it trains them in resumé writing, interviewing, critical thinking, team building, leadership, public speaking, how to dress, ethics, getting to work on time, and time management. What it really does is it gives them self-confidence. When these kids leave us, they know they’re going to succeed and because they know it, they become self-fulfilling prophecies.
ALEC HOGG: Can it travel? Can it come to South Africa?
RONALD BRUDER: Sure. It can travel globally. It’s the same human equation.
ALEC HOGG: And when are you going to do that? Well, are you going to make it travel? North Africa’s important, but there’s a whole, big world out there.
RONALD BRUDER: We’re looking at it right now. We’re limited by capacity and quite frankly, I think the most challenging part of the globe right now, is the Middle East. That’s where we’re putting our firepower.
ALEC HOGG:Â Ron Bruder is the Founder of Education for Employment.
