JumpStart International

Patrick McGrann, Program Advisor - Jordan

JumpStart International’s recycling partners in Jordan have been doing a commendable job developing supply networks to provide our vocational recycling business with a necessary base of raw materials to ensure our upcoming training and manufacturing efforts are as seamless as possible. Yet to ensure that our project achieves a critical mass in the short-term, JumpStart has collaborated with its partners to invest in a collection truck to help support reliable, effective collection of recyclables at several of our cornerstone garbage suppliers in Amman. With this foothold, the project now looks forward to scaling-up its collection efforts in the short-term, and focusing increasingly on the vocational training of 40 participants. With a core group of participants as well as informally partnering with countless Iraqis working to recycle trash, the project will provide premium access to fair market prices for all scavenged commodities. JumpStart is eager to push forward in this under-developed industry and achieve outsized results together with those who are so often neglected any such opportunities.

Patrick McGrann, Program Advisor - Jordan

JumpStart International is currently implementing a pioneering recycling initiative that will serve as a vocational training vehicle for displaced Iraqis and impoverished Jordanians that, as garbage scavengers, are well below the scope of traditional development supports. Partnering with Ruwwad, a privately-funded Jordanian NGO, and Entity Green, a locally-based eco-developer, JumpStart’s joint public-private initiative will pursue an experimental recycling business for young adults from Iraq and Jordan who currently live on the edge of subsistence as scavengers of trash.

By sharing capital costs with Ruwwad* and Entity Green, JumpStart can reformulate the current economics of collecting recycled materials to ensure Iraqi neighborhoods are prioritized, and in turn, provide fair market value to all goods collected by Iraqi scavengers. From this first step into the recycling community, 30 Iraqi and 10 Jordanian scavengers will consequently be selected to participate in vocational training introducing the technical aspects of recycling, as well as the more advanced work required in the actual transformation of recycled commodities into value-added goods, such as building materials.

From this initial foundation, in concert with the expected momentum of being the sole collectors of PET (plastic) and glass in Jordan, the collection and production of recycled materials will continue on, ensuring Iraqi scavengers have equal access to local commodity markets (and in turn work on-demand), as well as an established community which understands the possibilities of further exploiting recycled materials. Beyond the financial and logistical supports helping address hardship through structure and training stipends, the project will also emphasize advanced vocational lessons and potential future partnership opportunities that will empower participants to pursue productive livelihoods well beyond the life of the program. In turn, the expected results of this project include:

• supporting the immediate financial needs of 40 participants by providing living stipends
• increasing business and life skills of young adults residing in Jordan through progressive technical training
• encouraging upward mobility beyond scavenging and access towards the more productive and profitable aspects of recycling, and
• serving as a catalyst in the local production of inexpensive, sustainable building materials
  

Patrick McGrann, Program Advisor - Jordan

The goals of JumpStart’s Vocational Skills Training Fellowship involve more than just improving participants’ working skills – there is also an emphasis on the importance of civic responsibility. Toward this end, the project has begun an outreach component where participants begin to share both what they’re learning in the program, as well as a bit of themselves, with some of the region’s youngest victims. Current efforts are still small, yet the project looks forward to increasing such work aggressively as the project matures in the months ahead.