There are dozens of organizations and hundreds of initiatives working hard to help the youth in connecting with work opportunities in the Middle East. Even so, most young people feel alone, guided only by family and friends, as they contemplate the transition from the world of education to the world of work.

Therefore, FORAS project was born in April 2012. It is the first employability portal to bring together different resources, opportunities and initiatives for young people, who were eager to learn, grow and perform, and who just did not know where to start.

The aim of the FORAS project is to connect young graduates to job providers (private sector) and to become a platform that would provide 24/7 learning for skills and certification through various online trainings along with direct training on employable skills.

The response to the FORAS project was stunning – from Qatar to Libya to Morocco and the MENA region.

Therefore, the FORAS project, funded by the USAID organization, officially started in Iraq in 2013 and was managed by FHI 360 until the end of 2015.

Starting from January 2016, managed by Rwanga Foundation, the FORAS project has been working all over Iraq virtually under the name of Rwanga FORAS.
The outcome of Rwanga Foras 2016 was sensational with more than 200,000 youth directly benefitting from this project and 1,496 job seekers placed into jobs. Hence, it was decided that Rwanga Foras will continue in 2017 and that this time the project will be funded by Silatech and Rwanga Foundation through its partners. Apart from linking job seekers and job providers, Rwanga Foundation provides training courses for some selected universities all over Iraq. The training courses will be initiated through Rwanga Foundation and its partners who are reputed and experienced in this field.

Starting from April 1, 2019 the Rwanga Foras project is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), through a cooperation between the Gesellschaft fur International Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH and the Rwanga Foundation for its implementation until December 2020.

Until December 2021, the Rwanga Foras project was funded by Rwanga Foundation in partnership with silatech and implemented by Rwanga Foundation.

Starting from January 2022 until now, the Rwanga Foras project is being funded by Rwanga Foundation itself and it continues to connect job seekers with job providers all over Iraq. Since its initial launch in 2016, the Rwanga Foras project has benefited a total of 72,162 people throughout Iraq.