Youth training in Tunisia after the 2025 aid cuts: keeping quality on a smaller budget

In early 2025, most US foreign aid stopped almost overnight. For many Tunisian associations that ran youth programmes, that meant a training cycle cancelled mid-way, trainers unpaid, and participants who had been promised a certificate left with nothing. One reported example: a $25 million USAID programme that worked in 22 of Tunisia's 24 governorates was cancelled with about $5 million of committed funding still unspent.

I have trained more than 1,120 young people with associations, networks and donor-funded programmes, so this hits close to home. This article is not about politics. It is about one practical question: how do you keep training young people well when the budget is a third of what it was?

Who is still funding youth skills in Tunisia

The money did not disappear entirely. It moved, and it now comes with different expectations. A few examples worth tracking:

• UNDP's TARABOT III project recruited lead Tunisian NGOs in 2026 to run regional youth inclusion work, with about 300,000 TND per project. The 2026 call closed in September; watch for the next one.
• Investing for Employment (IFE), funded by Germany, opened a 2026 call in Tunisia for organisations registered for at least three years, focused on job creation and training linked to real jobs.
• The UN Multi-Partner Trust Fund for Youth and Employment in Tunisia and EU programmes such as EU4Youth keep funding employability work.

The common thread: funders now want jobs and measurable change, not attendance sheets. A proposal that says "we trained 200 young people" is weaker than one that says "60 of them were placed in internships within three months, here is how we checked".

Five ways to keep quality with less money

1. Cut hours, not practice. When budgets shrink, the first instinct is to cut workshops short by removing the exercises. Do the opposite. Remove the theory you can send as a two-page handout, and keep the role-plays, the practice interviews and the feedback. Young people remember what they did, not what they heard.

2. Train trainers, not only participants. One train-the-trainer cycle with ten motivated peer educators reaches far more people than ten workshops you run yourself. It is also what funders call sustainability, and they ask for it explicitly now.

3. Bring companies in early. A Tunisian company that pays the training tax (TFP) can have in-house training reimbursed by the CNFCPP, within published caps. That makes a joint programme cheap for the company: it hosts or co-funds sessions, you bring the method, and the young people meet real employers instead of hearing about them.

4. Mix in-person and short online follow-ups. Two strong in-person days followed by four short online check-ins often keep more of the learning than four in-person days with nothing after. The follow-up is where people actually apply what they learned.

5. Measure one thing properly. Pick a single result that matters to your funder, such as interviews obtained, internships started or projects launched, and track it for three months after the training. One honest number beats ten vague ones in the next proposal.

A simple budget split that holds up

For a small programme, a reasonable starting point is: half for the sessions themselves (trainers, venue, materials), a quarter for follow-up and coaching, and a quarter for measuring results and reporting. A common weakness in programmes that lose funding is spending almost everything on the first part, then having no way to show impact when it matters.

What to do this month

• List the funders above and set alerts for their calls.
• Rewrite your programme summary around one employment result, not activity numbers.
• Identify two companies near you that could host or co-fund a session.
• Turn your best workshop into a train-the-trainer version.

Smaller budgets are not a reason to train worse. They are a reason to stop doing the parts that never worked.

Sources: USAID in Tunisia (USAIDStopWork), UNDP TARABOT III call, Investing for Employment 2026 call, UN MPTF for Youth and Employment in Tunisia.

Rebuilding a youth programme or preparing a proposal? I design and deliver training for associations and donor-funded programmes in Arabic, French and English, from the needs assessment to the final report. Get my free workshop planning template or book a free call.