A Middle East Marshall Plan

As it did for many, the September 2001 terrorist attacks got Ron Bruder thinking. Not about developing new shopping malls, his profession, but about what he could do to combat militancy among young Muslims in the Middle East.

“I saw Middle Eastern countries’ populations growing and their economies not expanding,” says Bruder, 59. “This gap is not a good formula for world peace.”

Bruder had traveled to Northern Ireland “in the days when the religious hostility was so thick you could cut it” and was inspired by the fact that long-warring Catholics and Protestants there finally made peace. “Suddenly, people who had been focused on killing were now focused on making a killing, sometimes together,” he says. “The despair, tension and depression were replaced by opportunity, hope and the chance for a better future.”

He saw that some of the Irish lessons might apply, as well as those learned from the rebuilding of Europe after World War II.

“The challenge is to create a ‘Marshall Plan’ and inundate the Middle East with opportunities,” says Bruder excitedly.

After meeting with educators throughout the region, the businessman determined that school systems were churning out educated yet sometimes unemployable graduates, contributing to a 15 percent unemployment rate. Missing from the curricula were practical business and workplace skills. So in 2002, he founded the Education for Employment Foundation (EFE), a non-profit organization that aims to create partnerships that increase employment opportunities for youth in Muslim countries.

Although it is too early to assess the foundation’s long-term impact, it has already had some success. In Jordan, an EFE program has taught 700 students how to write resumes, how to focus on employers’ needs, what to wear and say in an interview and how to work with others. “It’s kind of like Dale Carnegie for the workplace on steroids,” Bruder quips, referring to the author’s 1937 best seller, How to Win Friends and Influence People. In Morocco, EFE offers the same program as well as sales and marketing. And it will soon launch a construction-site management course in Ramallah, Hebron and Nablus.

Bruder’s most ambitious project is in troubled Gaza. With the help of the University of Maryland’s business school, EFE created an English language and mini-MBA program for Gazan students with accounting backgrounds. Consolidated Contractors Company, the largest contractor in the Gulf region with 126,000 employees, has agreed to hire 120 EFE graduates over a three-year period. Most will be given positions in the United Arab Emirates, where the job market is flourishing. But four of the 11 graduates of the pilot class have been placed in Gaza. Three months after graduation, Reham Jarrada, 24, landed a job as an accountant for the Ramatan news agency. “[Jarrada] has many friends who graduated from university but did not attend EFE courses and are still not working,” says Mohammad Naja, who directs the Gaza program.

As Jarrada’s case indicates, EFE programs include women. Bruder recently dined at the family home of a 20-year-old female student in Morocco whose father was unable to work due to an injury. “She’s now supporting them. Her mother thanked us for giving her daughter and the family a future,” he says. “There seems to be more sociological impact when you take a woman and make her a breadwinner.”

Shibley Telhami, born to an Arab family living in Israel and an EFE board member, warns that reducing unemployment alone will not prevent militancy. “You cannot draw a correlation that says unemployed, therefore militant,” says Telhami, a Fellow at the Brookings Institution and a University of Maryland professor. “We know historically that violence has multiple explanations, and that’s not different in Arab Muslim countries.” Still, he notes that his research indicates a significant correlation between low incomes and anti-American sentiment.

Another board member, the 9/11 Commission’s Vice-Chairman Lee Hamilton, believes that economic growth in the Middle East creates a better environment for peace. “It doesn't guarantee peace will be reached, but it certainly makes it more likely,” he says. “More importantly, it gives these young people hope and opportunity and a stake in life.”

Bruder has friends and family members who don’t understand why he is pouring time and resources into helping young Muslims. “I tell them I think what I am doing is helping the planet—and Israel,” he says. Indeed, many Jews support his work: Much of the foundation’s private funding comes from Jewish donors.

It is Bruder’s hope that EFE’s projects will inspire international companies to develop their own home-grown labor pools in the Middle East. “There are schools where 85 percent of graduates don’t get jobs,” he says. “Eighty-five percent of ours do. We’re hoping that the ripple effect will put us out of business.” He adds: “Maybe ten years from now I’ll be back building shopping malls.”—Nadine Epstein