This Report, prepared by the World Bank, examines five pivotal phases of life that can help unleash the development of young people’s potential with the right government policies: learning, working, staying healthy, forming families, and exercising citizenship. Within each of these transitions, governments need not only to increase investments directly but also to cultivate an environment for young people and their families to invest in themselves. The Report identifies three policy directions for helping youth develop themselves and contribute to society: expanding opportunities, enhancing capabilities, and providing second chances.
Download the full report in English, using the link below. Overviews are available in multiple other languages. These overviews can be found here.
This report makes the case for redirecting the response to HIV and AIDS to address children’s needs more effectively. Drawing on the best body of evidence yet assembled on children affected by AIDS, it shows where existing approaches have gone off track and what should now be done, how, and by whom. The report summarizes the evidence from two years of research and analysis by the Joint
Learning Initiative on Children and HIV/AIDS (JLICA).
Focusing mainly on countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, the report examines what has worked and what hasn't in the fight against HIV/AIDS, and emphasizes the need for HIV and AIDS services to be complemented with a social protection agenda, placing children front and center. Strengthening families, supporting collaborative action within communities, and securing the human capital of rising generation will be key elements in future efforts to end the HIV/AIDS crisis.
Click the link below to download the report in English. It is also available in French and Portuguese here.
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.
AED’s Global Learning Group cordially invites you to a panel discussion about Adolescent Girls and the Workforce
Wednesday, June 24th from 9:30 to 11:30 a.m.
In AED’s Academy Hall
1825 Connecticut Ave, NW, 8th Floor
Washington, DC 20009
Distinguished Speakers will be
- Dr. Andrew Morrison, Senior Economist and Gender Specialist at the World Bank;
- Allyn Moushey, Poverty Analysis & Social Safety Nets Advisor at USAID Bureau for Economic Growth, Agriculture and Trade; and
- Dr. Conrad Person, Director of International Programs and Product Giving from Johnson & Johnson.
The panel will be moderated by May Rihani, Senior Vice President and Director of the Global Learning Group, AED. A light breakfast will be served.
Please RSVP to Greta Stults, Executive Assistant at the Center for Gender Equity at:
gstults@aed.org or (202) 884-8517
The W. K. Kellogg Foundation works in the United States, Latin America and the Caribbean, and southern Africa. The foundation focuses on children, and has three funding priorities: 1) Learning; 2) Food, Health, and Well-Being; and 3) Family Economic Security.
The foundation seeks proposals that have the potential to:
- Have a measurable impact on children and families who face significant barriers to opportunity for success
- Strengthen the “opportunity grid” (the systems and services) within communities that create opportunities for children
- Make significant and sustainable change
- Engage promising innovative solutions and technologies
- Work in partnership with communities, governments, businesses, and experts
- Leverage support from other sources
- Build on existing Kellogg Foundation work
Grants are awarded on an ongoing basis. Follow the link below for more details, or see the links above for region-specific information.
The Michael & Susan Dell Foundation’s primary goal is to support and initiate programs that directly serve the needs of children living in urban poverty. Their focus areas are education, childhood health, and family economic stability through microfinance.
Currently, most of their funding for economic initiatives is focused on projects in urban India, while African funding focuses on childhood health. This regional/sectoral focus is not an official requirement in their application process, but priority is given to projects that align with the Foundation's geographic and sectoral focus areas.
To learn more, see the foundation's FAQs.
Applications are accepted on an ongoing basis. Apply using the link below.
Working with local and institutional actors, the Project will promote the participation of the private sector, local governments, Congress, civilian police, government institutions, community and youth leaders and other actors in the implementation and oversight of key prevention policy reforms and youth-oriented prevention programs. The emphasis of this project is to strengthen community and public sector institutions by ensuring the replication of successful initiatives and the development and implementation of new ones. With this effort, USAID seeks to promote coordinated action and broad participation in crime prevention, while developing effective and comprehensive community-based strategies involving the private sector.
Over a period of five years, the Project aims to achieve the following results:
- Reduce the incidence of crime through crime prevention activities;
- Prevent and reduce the risk of youth entering into or continuing in a life of crime by improving and expanding services provided to at-risk youth;
- Promote collaborative interventions among young people, parents, community institutions, and business leaders coming together to address and meet the needs of at-risk youth;
- Strengthen and consolidate the Youth Alliance Association and other local institutions;
- Improve and expand the existing job placement network through private sector alliances, such that it remains useful and self-sustaining;
- Provide market-driven skills enhancement to youth in neighborhoods with high crime incidence and gang activity;
- Spur municipal economic development and security infrastructure development through a community action fund;
- Assist key national-level institutions and local governments to improve crime prevention services;
- Expand community-based policing; and
- Implement Mérida crime prevention-related activities for a three-year period.
Please visit link below for contact information and more details
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
Cisco's strategy is to encourage individual entrepreneurship, innovation and success among underserved populations via access to capital, small business development, workforce training, and similarly effective economic empowerment strategies...Cisco's investments support programs with innovative solutions which increase capacity, allowing the grantee organization to deliver its products and/or services more effectively and efficiently. We also support the design and implementation of web-based tools which increase the availability of, or improve access to, products and/or services that are necessary for people to enter or re-enter the workforce and earn a living wage.
[...]
Cisco grants support general job creation, job placement, skills development, training, and resources programs for individuals seeking to upgrade their skills and capabilities so they can enter or re-enter the workforce, maintain a viable livelihood, and contribute to overall economic development in their communities. These grants focus on vulnerable and/or underserved populations such as women, youth, wounded and permanently disabled veterans, and others. Cisco also funds microfinance/microcredit programs designed to increase the availability of affordable capital.Cisco investments in this category have supported programs developed by The Grameen Foundation, The Acumen Fund, ACCION International and others, to upgrade technology platforms of microfinance organizations, facilitate partnerships with other microfinance organizations to establish best practices and share opportunities for replication and scale, and other programs to expand the breadth and depth of products and services provided by microfinance organizations in order to better serve their customers.
For more information, including eligibility requirements, visit their website, linked below. Grants are awarded on an ongoing basis.
.jpg "Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kenstein/335507720/ Creative Commons license: Attribution, Non-Commercial, No Derivative Works")
Radha Rajkotia (IRC) and Jason Wolfe (USAID/MD) announce the launch of an open paper on economic strengthening approaches for youth in conflict, and invite you to participate in creating it.
A few months ago, we gave a joint presentation to the Washington Network on Children in Armed Conflict to examine the relative merits of applying sustainable livelihoods and value chain approaches to the needs of unemployed youth in conflict-affected environments. We found the discussion and interaction fascinating, and others seemed to be interested in both what we had to say as well as the questions we thought remained to be answered. In the afterglow of this event, the CYES folks somehow talked us into taking our collaboration forward and writing a paper exploring economic approaches for youth in conflict.
Well, once the excitement wore off, we realized we were going to need a lot of help if our paper was going to be accurate, relevant, and useful. We found our dialogue on this topic and the discussion we were able to have with others almost more valuable than any new conclusions we finally agreed to. Short of publicly locking ourselves in a bubble, how could we maintain this kind of transparency and interaction with the audience while writing a paper?
We didn’t have to look far for inspiration. David Roodman of the Center for Global Development recently launched his “open book blog” as an experiment in writing his new book on microfinance. As David noted, “Some books are written by experts wanting to share their expertise. In contrast, I am writing this book in order to become an expert. Writing it is a voyage of discovery.” We couldn’t agree more with our humble task at hand and are in great debt to him for demonstrating how to use this new medium.
So how will this work? We’ll be experimenting with this as we go, but here are the basics. The paper will consist of five main sections, focusing on economic strengthening for youth in conflict. Over the next 12 months, we will periodically upload section drafts in Microsoft Word (.doc) or Adobe Acrobat (.pdf) formats as a main post in the blog, so that you can comment on the drafts by commenting on these posts. We’ve set up a home page for this project that you can always refer to in order to see all posts. You can also search for or click on the tags for “open paper” to get this information. We will make periodic posts along the way to share our thinking, point out new resources or ideas we’ve found, or ask for your own insights, expertise, and experiences. We sincerely hope you’ll take the opportunity, help point us in the right direction and keep us honest.
In our next post we’ll share our plans for the structure of the open paper, so please be sure to check in again soon. In the meantime, please let us know what you think of this whole initiative and any potential pitfalls we should try to avoid!
- Radha & Jason
Click here for the next post in the Open Paper series.
In 2005 and 2006 UNICEF arranged for children and young people who had been trafficked while under 18 years of age to be interviewed in their home countries: Albania, Kosovo, Republic of Moldova and Romania. Based on these interviws, the UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre, prepared this report to stimulate thinking and action.
The study:
- Illustrates, through concrete examples, the complexity and dynamics of child trafficking.
- Provides insight into how the children and young people perceived the assistance they were offered
- Identifies the extent to which the participating children and young people, at the time they received assistance, had been questioned about their views and given the opportunity to participate in decisions regarding their situation.
- Provides an understanding of the importance of listening to children and young people and involving them in the design and implementation of actions to prevent and address child trafficking.
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. Now, with labor markets already under pressure to generate employment for record numbers of graduates, the region faces a new set of challenges due to the global downturn and its affects on oil prices, exports, remittances, and foreign investment. For Middle Eastern economies to emerge stronger, policies forged during the downturn must be consistent with long-term goals of cultivating a skilled workforce, expanding the role of the private sector, and reducing the appeal of government employment.
