The goal of this document is to help the reader better understand how to strengthen market assessments for youth workforce development programs. It considers issues, such as institutional capacity, local context, appropriate tools and approaches, and including youth in these assessments. The learning product is based on the experiences of three organizations, Education Development Center, Save the Children, and the International Rescue Committee, that conducted market assessment to develop and maintain market-driven youth workforce development programs. It shares the benefits and challenges of different approaches to market assessment and provides lessons learned and recommendations.

This publication is part of a series resulting from the SEEP Network “Youth Workforce Development: Using 100% Market-Driven Programs to Achieve 100% Employment” Practitioner Learning Program (PLP). The objective of the program is to identify, encourage, and disseminate the replicable strategies for market-driven programs that improve youth employment success and measure the effectiveness of these strategies.

This document shares three brief case studies, from Partners of the Americas in South America, the International Rescue Committee in West Africa, and Education Development Center in Haiti, that show how youth workforce development programs can form partnerships to help them be more market driven. These case studies showcase three different partnerships that help implementing organizations maintain and deepen a market orientation. The three practitioner agencies share their experiences and recommendations in forming partnerships to improve market focus.

This publication is part of a series resulting from the SEEP Network “Youth Workforce Development: Using 100% Market-Driven Programs to Achieve 100% Employment” Practitioner Learning Program (PLP). The objective of the program is to identify, encourage, and disseminate the replicable strategies for market-driven programs that improve youth employment success and measure the effectiveness of these strategies.

This document presents some of the basic principles and sample indicators of performance management that may help practitioners interested in monitoring and evaluation for youth-workforce development projects that are market driven. It also highlights experiences from three PLP partners in measuring causal-model indicators and the specific lessons they learned.

This publication is part of a series resulting from the SEEP Network “Youth Workforce Development: Using 100% Market-Driven Programs to Achieve 100% Employment” Practitioner Learning Program (PLP). The objective of the program is to identify, encourage, and disseminate the replicable strategies for market-driven programs that improve youth employment success and measure the effectiveness of these strategies.

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.

This publication is part of a series resulting from the SEEP Network “Youth Workforce Development: Using 100% Market-Driven Programs to Achieve 100% Employment” Practitioner Learning Program (PLP). The objective of the program is to identify, encourage, and disseminate the replicable strategies for market-driven programs that improve youth employment success and measure the effectiveness of these strategies.

This document provides case studies of three different market-driven youth workforce development projects to demonstrate the variety of scale-up strategies of the three initiatives and offers examples and lessons learned. The study of each project has a brief description of the program; gives the rationale for the scale-up strategy selected; and discusses the scale-up activity, sharing challenges and approaches for staying market-driven. In addition, the discussions include specific recommendations drawn from each project’s experience.

This publication is part of a series resulting from the SEEP Network “Youth Workforce Development: Using 100% Market-Driven Programs to Achieve 100% Employment” Practitioner Learning Program (PLP). The objective of the program is to identify, encourage, and disseminate the replicable strategies for market-driven programs that improve youth employment success and measure the effectiveness of these strategies.

This case study documents learning from Fondation Zakoura Microcredit’s (FZMC, or Zakoura) “Expanding Financial Services to Vulnerable Youth in Morocco,” or LYKOM (which means “for you” in Arabic), project.

The LYKOM objectives are as follows:

• Enhance and extend financial and non-financial services available to youth (15-24) and members of their households in Morocco;
• Develop a system to retain vulnerable youth in a program that prepares them to access appropriate financial services; and
• Foster inter-agency linkages for successful delivery of financial and non-financial services.

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.

From 2006–2009, Save the Children and Fondation Zakoura Micro-Crédit (Zakoura) partnered to implement a youth financial services and livelihoods promotion project called “Linking Youth with Knowledge and Opportunities in Microfinance,” or LYKOM. The program included financial and business literacy training, savings promotion, and access to credit for youth businesses. This case study examines the challenges Save the Children and Zakoura faced and the ways the institutions sought to address these challenges. This document examines the institutional, local market, and programmatic difficulties encountered, and offers recommendations and lessons learned.

The overall objective of USAID/Nicaragua’s sustainable tourism activity is to assist Nicaragua in expanding the economic benefits of tourism to the less advantaged through the growth of small businesses, the protection of the country’s environment and natural resources, and improvement in the quality of public education and outreach. One of the activities principal goals is to increase MSME business growth in an environmentally sustainable manner through market-driven ecotourism development/linkage programs, cluster activities, and environmental protection in order to reduce poverty for the less advantaged.

In the near future, USAID/Yemen intends to announce a full and open competition to implement the Mission’s Community Livelihoods Project (CLP) subject to the availability of funds. This integrated, flexible, multi-sectoral initiative will serve as the flagship project for the Mission’s implementation of the 2010-2012 USAID/Yemen Strategy. CLP is not a traditional development initiative, but it will rely heavily on tried and proven as well as innovative tools transition and development environments.

The project is intended to mitigate the drivers of instability in some of Yemen’s most difficult areas through the facilitation and implementation of quality government service delivery, job creation, responsive local governance, and active civic participation. Rapidly responding to community-based initiatives to demonstrate USAID’s and the Government of Yemen’s commitment to underserved communities will be a hallmark of this project. Youth under 25 years old, representing 75% of Yemen’s population, will be a particularly important demographic group throughout implementation. Activities will quickly and effectively mitigate critical threats to stability in Yemen by building trust and relationships between communities with historically difficult relations with Yemeni authorities and the citizens in targeted areas.

This project will be expected to build on and complement ongoing activities during the transition phase between the existing portfolio of USAID/Yemen projects and this flagship initiative. Very close coordination and collaboration with the Mission’s future National Governance Project (NGP) will be extremely important during the implementation of the CLP. The implementer also will partner with and make extensive use of local, Yemeni organizations during the implementation of the project. The implementer also will coordinate with USAID’s future Monitoring and Evaluation Project to help ensure that program results are tracked against stability measures.

USAID/Yemen’s 2010-2012 Strategy will be released when this solicitation is released for bid. USAID anticipates an award for a base period of three years with the potential for follow-on activities dependent on performance and availability of funding. Subject to the availability of funds, the estimated budget for the three year base period is approximately $65 million. Please note that the Mission staff will be unable to entertain meetings or respond to queries with prospective implementers at this stage. For further information, please check the web site www.grants.gov in the near future.

This page provides presentations and supplementary materials related to a 2008 conference marking the conclusion of a project on ‘Youth Exclusion and Political Violence’ co-funded by the World Bank ‘Trust Fund for Environmentally and Socially Sustainable Development’ (TFESSD) and the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The project sought to identify ways to break the adverse relationship between youth bulges (large youth cohorts), marginalization, and political violence, and to engage large youth cohorts positively in development.

The aim of the conference was to discuss advances in the research on youth and political violence in relation to developmental policies targeted towards youth inclusion, such as education reform, social protection, employment programs, urban development strategies, micro credit schemes and reintegration programs for displaced youth or former combatants. At-risk youth in Sub-Saharan Africa were a particular focus.

The conference was co-organized by the Africa Fragile States, Conflict and Social Development Unit of the World Bank and the Centre for the Study of Civil War (CSCW) at the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo (PRIO).