Job Title: Technical Project Specialist (Workforce & Youth Development Advisor)
Grade: GS-301-13
Area of Consideration: All Sources

Canditates for this position must be U.S. citizens and be able to be security cleared for assignment. This is a 13 month Temporary, Schedule B appointment, with possible extension of up to 5 years.

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.

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 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.

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 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.

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.

This book explores in detail the challenges facing Africa's youth in their transition from school to work, and proposes a strategy for meeting those challenges. It addresses the importance of investing in youth: not only because by 2010, youth will account for 28% of the population of Africa, but because labor is the most abundant asset in poor households in Africa, and improving the outcomes of labor is a key factor in moving out of poverty.

The International Rescue Committee and Fundacion Paraguaya invite you to engage in a participatory learning event, the School-based Businesses workshop, to be held on Thursday September 10th, 2009 at the International Rescue Committee offices in Washington DC.

International Rescue Committee, Conference Room,
1730 M Street, NW - Suite 505, Washington DC
Thursday September 10th, 2009

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.