UNWTO has launched a new ST-EP project in Mongolia, titled Capacity Building for Tourism Employees. The project has as objective to build capacities among tourism employees and unemployed young people to make a career in the tourism sector. The project is implemented with a generous contribution from the UNWTO ST-EP Foundation, and in collaboration with the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism of Mongolia, the Sustainable Tourism Development Centre of Mongolia, and the CBI (Centre for the Promotion of Imports from developing countries), an agency of the Netherlands Ministry of Economic Affairs.

Based on a needs assessment among private sector operators, the project stakeholders are preparing detailed curricula with training modules and manuals for training seminars that will be delivered in the low season to select tourism employees, who have the ambition and potential to advance their career in the tourism sector, as well as to unemployed young people who are looking for opportunities to enter the sector.  Training seminars will be delivered on two different subjects: “tourism service and hospitality” and “tourism management”.

Upon completion of the curricula, local trainers will be selected who will first attend a train the trainer course before starting delivering the seminars. The new training seminars will be announced at tourism sector websites, and participants will be identified and selected in collaboration with the Tourism Department of the Ulaanbaatar City Administration and the Mongolian Hotels Association. The target of the project is to provide training to 200 people in 2016, at least half of them being women.  In order to measure the results of the training, the project will carry out surveys among the participants who have completed the seminars to assess how the training has helped to enhance their skills and experience, and to gain economic benefits from making a career in the tourism sector.