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BP Azerbaijan awards a grant for Kurdamir, Ujar and Agdash communities

03 November 2009 15:56 (UTC +04:00)

Baku. Nijat Mustafayev â€“ APA-Economics. BP on behalf of its co-venturers in the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli (ACG), Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC), Shah Deniz (SD), and South Caucasus Pipeline (SCP) projects is pleased to announce the award of a grant to enhance economic opportunities and skills development in the Kurdamir, Ujar and Agdash communities along the BTC and SCP pipelines.

The project will mainly target those entrepreneurship entities which have previously been established within the framework of BP and co-venturersâ€™ Community Investment Programme (CIP). These will include the successful water purification enterprises, as well as the youth who have selected entrepreneurship activity as their career.

The goal of the project is to create better environment for entrepreneurs to build sustainable business development and to support unemployed youth in finding employment opportunities in the three districts along the pipelines. To achieve this goal, the project will focus on three main objectives:

- enable eight entities created by BP and co-venturersâ€™ previous CIP projects to sustain, develop, and integrate with the communities and the state programmes
- scale up the youth apprenticeship programme through enhancing marketable skills, employment and income generating opportunities for youth, and meeting the entitiesâ€™ needs in finding specialized employees, and
- support the targeted entrepreneurs and entities in promoting their businesses by improving their access to loans and leasing

The project will use a cooperation mechanism designed to engage three other parties in addition to BP and co-venturers and the communities themselves â€“ local partners, relevant government bodies and credit/ leasing institutions, focusing mainly on collaboration with local executive agencies and relevant state programmes.

The project will be implemented by the Umid Humanitarian and Social Support Center (HSSC) â€“ a national non-governmental organisation established in 1997. Umid was selected to deliver the project based on competitive selection exercise in response to the solicitation process held within BP and co-venturersâ€™ Community Development Initiative along the BTC and SCP pipelines.

The total amount of BP and co-venturersâ€™ contribution to this project is $326,155. In addition, communities will contribute $43,760 towards supporting the project. The duration of the project is eighteen months between October 2009 and April 2011.