This technical note presents the experience of two organizations- Fundación Paraguaya and Partners of the Americas- whose youth-workforce development programs actively participate in the market, selling the same goods and services that they train their students to provide and/or selling their own services as effective trainers of youth, as a way of both overcoming resource constraints and ensuring program quality and relevance.

The USAID/Malawi Education team is interested in building strong alliances to prepare the next generation of Malawian citizens in the workforce. Proposed activities should be responsive to the National Education Sector Plan goals and targets and should help promote knowledge, skills and self-reliance of in and out of school children and youth.

This report summarizes the results of a field test of the Market Assessment Toolkit for Vocational Training Providers and Youth, which aims to assist vocational training programs in becoming more market-driven. The report summarizes the main findings of the field test in Northern Uganda in terms of the toolkit’s utility, as well as providing more specific recommendations for vocational training providers based on findings from the market assessment.

The Public Affairs section of the U.S. Embassy in Ankara invites Turkish non-governmental, non-profit organizations to submit funding proposals for a nationwide youth innovation and entrepreneurship program in Turkey. The goal of this program is to nurture creativity among Turkish high school students while allowing them to acquire entrepreneurship skills and to create formal and informal ties between Turkish and American youth engaged in business education.

This report highlights how service providers can be more effective in delivering market-led programs to young people. The information comes from a set of in-depth interviews and focus groups with 142 youth alumni (youth who have exited Employment, Entrepreneurship, and Training Programs). The report intends to fill a research gap by compiling information and insights about employment, enterprise and training programs from the perspective of the youth alumni themselves.

Cisco has created a new Global Impact Grant application as part of their Impact Cash Grants program. These grants fund projects which incorporate the internet in their development methodology, demonstrate sustainability, scalability, etc, and which address one of the key investment areas Cisco prioritizes. Organizations dealing with CYES issues will be particularly interested in the investment area "individual economic opportunity."

From their website:

Individual Economic Opportunity

In this report, the Middle East Youth Initiative cautions that a new jobs crisis may damage future prospects for the region's young people. For Middle Eastern economies, the global downturn coincides with a historically high share of 15- to 29-year-olds in the total population. This report shows that, even during the “boom” years of 2002 to 2008, young people in the Middle East did not benefit from high-quality education and struggled to find decent jobs.

This brochure presents the range of innovative interventions in child and youth promotion and provides examples of private sector cooperation. It takes an informative look at projects from various countries in areas such as out-of-school education and the reintegration of young offenders, outlining GTZ best practices and identifying potential cooperation partners.