EcoVentures International is hosting a series of workshops to assist organizations engaged in or interested in youth livelihoods programming.
On September 28th, 2009, the following workshops are available:
- Savings Programs for Youth – Best Practices & Tools, an interactive simulation training to help youth-serving organizations incorporate a savings and loan component into their operations. It will be held from 9:30am-12:00pm. Details available here.
- Environmental Livelihood Programs for Youth – Best Practices & Tools, which is meant to help organizations incorporate youth into natural resource value chain projects and recognize new business opportunities that have a positive impact on the local economy and environment. Details available here.
This series will be held at 1627 K Street NW #300, Washington, D.C. Space is limited. To RSVP, email lauren@eco-ventures.org.
The SEEP Network’s HIV & AIDS and Microenterprise Development (HAMED) Working Group is holding a weeklong online conference that addresses savings-led approaches in HIV & AIDS integrated programming. Discussion will be facilitated by HAMED members with the expert assistance of a panel of Savings-Led guest ‘speakers’ who will draft expert posts during the course of the weeklong conference. This conference is designed to be an open dialogue space for interested MED and public health professionals, a learning platform, and source of virtual peer review.
This report reviews the evidence on conditional cash transfers (CCTs)—safety net programs that have become popular in developing countries over the last decade. It concludes that CCTs generally have been successful in reducing poverty and encouraging parents to invest in the health and education of their children.
The report looks at a range of low- and middle-income countries; large and small programs; and those that work at local, regional, and national levels. Despite differences, all CCTs transfer cash while asking beneficiaries to make prespecified investments in child education and health. Key indicators, including levels of consumption, school enrollment, and health care visits, all increased among CCT recipients. However, final outcomes such as academic achievement and height for age were more mixed.
Save the Children and Fondation Zakoura Microcredit (FZMC) are implementing the “Linking Youth with Knowledge and Opportunities in Microfinance,” or LYKOM (which means “for you” in Arabic), project with seed funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and cofinanced with private funding from Save the Children and FZMC. The program includes financial and business literacy training; savings promotion; and access to credit for youth businesses.
Lessons learned include:
- Entrepreneurial skills training is not appreciated by all youth;
- The notion of ‘small enterprises’ and of growing businesses gradually is not well understood;
- Current minimum savings levels at La Poste (post office) may be a barrier to youth savings;
- Parents’ influence is strong, and programs may need to change negative parental attitudes about entrepreneurial activity.
Key stakeholders from 50 countries came together in Washington, DC, September 15-16, 2008, for Making Cents International’s 2nd Global Youth Enterprise Conference. During two days of meetings, the new and growing international community working on youth enterprise, employment and livelihoods development shared their experiences on what holds potential, what is really working and how to measure success.
This publication covers the two major themes from the September conference: Market-Driven Approaches and Effective Methodologies and Practices for Monitoring, Evaluating, and Conducting Impact Assessments, and it also presents a chapter on Youth-Inclusive Financial Services. This chapter was developed with leaders from the youth-inclusive financial services sector who shared their expertise at the conference and in an in-depth training course, Youth-Inclusive Financial Services: Emerging Good Practices.
Held in partnership with the Egyptian Ministry of State for Family and Population Affairs, this meeting marks the middle of the 2008-2010 Campaign to bring the Aflatoun Programme to 1 million children in 75 countries by the end of 2010. It will bring together Aflatoun’s global network of civil society organizations, governments, banks, corporations, foundations and many other stakeholders. Current and interested Aflatoun partners will participate to learn how Aflatoun works on the ground and in their regions. Donors and other stakeholders will also take part to learn about best practices and lessons learned in children’s social and financial empowerment. We will all come together to celebrate and share Aflatoun achievements to date and to plan the road ahead.
Online registration will open on Friday, May 15th
The latest agenda is now available for download. For more information contact: meeting2009@aflatoun.org or call +31 20 626 2025
The STRIVE Mozambique project aims to improve child well-being in Nampula Province, which has the highest level of food insecurity in the country. An alarming 63% of children in the province are chronically undernourished. The factors contributing to food insecurity in Nampula include lack of and limited access to food, poor food utilization and vulnerability in the form of economic, health and market shocks. Save the Children is addressing the issues of access to food and vulnerability by targeting individuals in households – particularly women with children under the age of 5, who face the highest risks of food insecurity – with interventions that increase household income and social capital.
By mobilizing, training and mentoring village savings and loan (VSL) groups, STRIVE Mozambique provides a mechanism for asset building, income generation and risk mitigation. VSL participation enables women to purchase more or better foods, invest in better income earning strategies and/or enter into and expand participation in agriculture value chains that increase their earning potential. The VSL groups, along with the community support networks formed under rotating labor schemes (called the Ajuda Mútua) that Save the Children is promoting in Nampula, will create a stronger social capital base for households, increasing their resilience to shocks.
Working in concert with an on-going food security project in the province, STRIVE Mozambique expects to improve nutritional outcomes for children under 5 by expanding both the amount and quality of food they eat. Specifically, by increasing household access to cash through savings and income earning opportunities, it is expected that dietary diversity and months of adequate food provisioning will increase, particularly through the prolonged “hungry season.” STRIVE Mozambique is one of five initiatives under the AED STRIVE Program exploring effective means of reducing the vulnerability of children and youth through economic strengthening.
Thierry van Bastelaer
tvanbastelaer@savethechildren.org
October 2008-August 2012
YouthInvest will build on the experience MEDA has gained in youth and microfinance since 2002.
The goals of the project are:
- To support microfinance institutions (MFIs) in developing savings and credit products to strengthen the capacity of youth-run enterprises in Egypt and Morocco
- To assess and improve safety conditions in the workplace
- To support improved education and training opportunities for youth to ensure improved long-term prospects and to contribute to a higher quality workforce.
MFIs will be the primary points of contact with youth clients, delivering financial and non-financial services to young entrepreneurs and enterprises employing youth. MFI staff will be trained in these interventions, and will in turn deliver them to working youth and business owners as appropriate.
Workforce readiness training will be delivered by specialist youth-serving organisations; MFIs could
potentially provide linkage support to trained youth, by connecting them to high-growth clients. Within five years, YouthInvest will directly touch the lives of over 50,000 young people - connecting them with innovative financial products and services that will build their economic prosperity, improve their working lives, enhance their workplace safety, and lead to a better quality of life for their families and themselves.
Jennifer Denomy, Project Manager
jdenomy@meda.org
September 2008 to 2013
YouthInvest will build on the experience MEDA has gained in youth and microfinance since 2002.
The goals of the project are:
- To support microfinance institutions (MFIs) in developing savings and credit products to strengthen the capacity of youth-run enterprises in Egypt and Morocco
- To assess and improve safety conditions in the workplace
- To support improved education and training opportunities for youth to ensure improved long-term prospects and to contribute to a higher quality workforce.
MFIs will be the primary points of contact with youth clients, delivering financial and non-financial services to young entrepreneurs and enterprises employing youth. MFI staff will be trained in these interventions, and will in turn deliver them to working youth and business owners as appropriate.
Workforce readiness training will be delivered by specialist youth-serving organisations; MFIs could
potentially provide linkage support to trained youth, by connecting them to high-growth clients. Within five years, YouthInvest will directly touch the lives of over 50,000 young people - connecting them with innovative financial products and services that will build their economic prosperity, improve their working lives, enhance their workplace safety, and lead to a better quality of life for their families and themselves.
Jennifer Denomy, Project Manager
jdenomy@meda.org
September 2008 to 2013
This white paper aims to augment the limited existing literature and research on child savings accounts (CSAs) by providing an overview of the current global landscape of CSAs in their various forms. By describing and briefly assessing some of the reasons why institutions offer CSAs and the range of features that can constitute their design, the authors aim to broaden understanding of these accounts in their various forms, illustrate some global trends in child savings accounts, and argue that CSAs warrant further attention and examination.
The paper provides a description and analysis of common features and purposes of CSAs in their variety of forms and purposes, concludes with a discussion of a few major obstacles faced by existing and potential providers of CSAs and offers a comparison of features of and rationales for various CSA products, programs, and policies in operation around the world in the Appendix.
