Who We Are

DISH is an e-learning platform developed to provide access to youth and women to develop employment skills. Through DISH, online short certificate courses of 3 months are created and made available. The courses increase the employability of youth and women because they link to key emerging sectors in employment and contribute to stability, peace and resilience.

The objective of DISH is to increase enrolment in certificate education in order to increase employment possibilities. Especially since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, youth and women face challenges to find employment, while employers struggle to employ people with matching skills in fast-growing sectors in the employment market. The opportunities and sectors of employment have been identified through research by the partners in earlier programmes, such as the ARC-EYE project led by Mekelle University, which identified key employment sectors for youth.
The DISH courses bridge that gap by focusing on low-threshold e-learning courses, which can be used in online and offline digital learning on a variety of devices and settings.

Each three-month course is designed to provide a certificate to students at pre-university level. The purpose of the certificate is to aid in employment in the sectors emerging sectors mentioned above. Successful completion of one or more courses courses also helps prepare for further education.

The courses are aimed at youth and women who have been particularly impacted by unemployment and who struggle to access (further) education. This includes second-school graduates, but also dropouts. DISH courses can be adapted for students with internet access or without internet access, in order to facilitate students who do not have constant connectivity.

The DISH platform was established with partners in Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Uganda and the Netherlands to implement two projects funded under the Orange Knowledge Programme managed by Nuffic and funded by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The projects contribute to peace building, employment for vulnerable youth and women, and strengthening resilience. Through building capacity on e-learning and development of 9 low-threshold skill-based courses, the projects will graduate around 13.000 youth/women in employable areas enhanced with digital innovation and increase capacities of authorities to utilize new opportunities of digitalization and data sharing. The courses link to developing areas of employment as well as key areas for peace building, resilience and stability.

DISH has 12 diverse partners ranging from Universities to civil society organisations. They include East Africa University and Eastern College in Somalia; the Sudanese Organisation for Research and Development (SORD) in Sudan; Community Empowerment for Progress Organisation (CEPO) in South Sudan; Mekelle University, Aksum University, Admas University, Addis Ababa University, and Adwa Pan-African University in Ethiopia; Kampala International University in Uganda; and the NGO Action Africa Help International. Tilburg University in the Netherlands assists the partnership.

The projects are supported by the Orange Knowledge Programme, a Dutch global development programme, available in 54 developing countries and managed by Nuffic, a Dutch non-profit organisation for internationalisation in education. Launched mid-2017, it aims to have provided tens of thousands with the possibility to change their future through education and training by mid-2022. The programme is supported by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs.