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Touria Benlafqih is a young activist that focuses on the role of youth in poverty reduction and social inclusion in Africa. She has been involved with social entrepreneurship and empowerment of youth and women for the past 12 years.
Working with non-profit organizations as a volunteer, a professional and a consultant, and with over 5 years focus on youth employability to solve one of the biggest issues of Africa : unemployment. In 2015, she created SIDE, Social Impact and Development Employment, a social business focused on youth employment, through volunteering programs for soft skills building, incubating early stage young social entrepreneurs to reach a scaling level, and providing HR services to companies who are looking for employable profiles. In 2016, she launched EMPEOPLE, that stands for Empower People, a sales incubator created by a group of business experts and consultants who mentored over 100 small business owners over 3 years in Morocco, this business and skills incubator focuses on capacity building of entrepreneurs and young business owners, scaling of those businesses to create sustainable jobs for unemployed youth. EMPEOPLE mentored 6 companies and cooperatives, and helped create 20 new jobs for youth, 7 of them are for youth at risk, who were not in education, training or employment.
In Healthcare, She started another social business, Al Maghreb Qudurat, a company that provides training and counceling for care giviers and professionals who work with kids with autism in Morocco. The company is working on creating a library for therapy tools and educational materials to provide to low income families who are supporting huge expenses because of autism. Touria worked on women empowerment, education, youth engagement in public affairs, rural development, oasis preservation, to finally focus her energy on youth empowerment.
She is the former Program Director of Enactus Morocco, where she monitors the progress of 200 projects of teams of social entrepreneurs in 80 campuses of universities and vocational training centers, and accelerated 10 of them to become strong SMEs. Touria was previously the administrative and financial assistant of project conducted by the UNDP, related to Climate Change Adaptation in Oasis Areas in Morocco.
