UNDP has been long supporting the Government of Timor-Leste in fostering youth-led MSMEs. The initiative was sharpened in 2021 under the Supporting Employment and Entrepreneurship for Women and Youth (SEEWAY) Project and later was scaled up and sustained under the Youth Employment and Entrepreneurship Skills (YEES) Project from 2022-2027. To this date, UNDP has been supporting over 300 youth-led enterprises across the country in different sectors and value chains aligning with the government’s priority, such as in agriculture, tourism, and small industry. The youth entrepreneurs were supported through a series of business training and financial access, such as soft loans and grants through the Business Innovation Challenge.

The YEES project is focusing on producing two medium-term sub-outcomes: 1) youth become employed and 2) youth become entrepreneurs, which will contribute to UNSDCF/CPD outcome 2: By 2025, institutions and people throughout Timor-Leste in all their diversity, especially women and youth, benefit from sustainable economic opportunities and decent work to reduce poverty, with three interrelated outputs:

Output 1: Youth obtain skills, competencies, and knowledge to be employed.

Output 2: Service providers are available to deliver holistic support to enhance employability.

Output 3: Youth, including migrants/returnees, obtain skills, knowledge, and services to start or expand their business.

In order to achieve output 3, YEES Project will deliver a series of entrepreneurship skills development support for youth, including entrepreneurship training and day-to-day business counselling to help youth entrepreneurs i) generate their business ideas, ii) establish and scale up their businesses. Against this backdrop, the YEES Project will hire four business counselling associates to be based in Dili, Baucau, Ermera, and Liquica respectively to provide day-to-day consultation for youth entrepreneurs and to support entrepreneurship initiatives in general.

1. Assist project team/project manager in providing business counselling for trainees of entrepreneurs training to align with the curriculum of entrepreneurship training (pre-incubation, incubation, and post-incubation) provided by the YEES project over the year.
2. Provide assistance to youth in Timor-Leste to launch or expand their business by providing mentoring, counselling, monitoring, and guidance on their business plans, management, procurement, etc
3. Assist project activities related to entrepreneurship training such as business needs assessment, business registration, business plan development, information sessions, business information provision and outreach, etc.
4. Provide assistance to support management, collection, and making the database of beneficiaries of entrepreneurship training skills and the progress of their businesses.
5. Assist the project team in facilitating workshops on various topics of entrepreneurship skills such as business competitions, business meetings, learning sessions as well as business networking events.
6. The incumbent performs other duties within their functional profile as deemed necessary for the efficient functioning of the Office and the Organization