This note from the World Bank PREMnotes series summarizes available research on the impact of schooling and employment of adolescent girls and young women on earnings and poverty reduction, demographic outcomes, child development outcomes, and female empowerment. It focuses on the fact that advances in gender parity between girls and boys in education are not matched by similar increased in equity in school-to-work transitions. It identifies key implications of this research for the formulation of public policy.'
This manual is designed to help educators engage young women in discussions about how rigid ideas of what it means to be women and men affect women's life choices, health and sexuality. The manual and accompanying video, Once upon a Girl, are part of Program M, an international initiative to promote young women’s empowerment and health. The manual was field-tested in Brazil, Jamaica, Mexico and Nicaragua and includes theoretical background and a series of participatory activities to facilitate group work with young women (15-24 years old) on issues including sexual and reproductive health, gender-based violence, community participation, and work/employment.
The competitive grant scheme supports youth employment projects in the Mano River Union (MRU) (Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone). It serves to identify and support small scale, innovative projects with potential to provide employment opportunities for young people (ages 15 to 30) while allowing youth organizations to actively participate in development. Youth organizations have first hand experience of the needs of young people but need of financial and/or technical support to reach their goals. Therefore grants of USD 2,000 to 50,000 will be awarded through an open, transparent, and competitive selection process.
Furthermore, the scheme serves as a laboratory to test innovative projects, in order to gain insight and extract lessons learned to be shared with the broader development community for possible replication and up-scaling.
Projects should contribute to youth employment in any of the following areas:
- Community projects and services
- Transition from school to work
- Vocational training for young people
- Youth entrepreneurship
- Economic empowerment of young women
As sustainability is an important aspect of the scheme preference will be given to partnerships with other stakeholders such as private enterprises, business associations, foundations, or government agencies.
This policy on post-conflict employment creation, income generation and reintegration provides a UN approach built around a common set of guiding principles and programming guidelines. It underlines the necessity of coherent and comprehensive strategies for post-conflict employment promotion and reintegration, and always includes the three programming tracks below. While all three tracks promote employment, their focus is different. The tracks focus respectively on stabilization, on return and reintegration opportunities, and on long-term employment creation. While programmes in these tracks start at the same time and as early as possible, their intensity during the recovery phase generally peaks at different times:
- Track A for stabilizing income generation and emergency employment: this track of employment programmes aims to consolidate security and stability, targeting conflict-affected individuals and groups;
- Track B for local economic recovery for employment and reintegration: this track of employment programmes focuses on promoting employment opportunities at the local level, where reintegration ultimately takes place; and
- Track C for sustainable employment creation and decent work: this track involves support to policies, institutional capacity building at the national level and creating a framework for social dialogue to define the rules of the game by consensus.
The policy notes that "creating youth employment that taps into the positive energy and skills of youth is a particularly difficult challenge, as youth often find themselves trapped in a vicious cycle of violence, poverty, illiteracy and social exclusion," and provides guidance on youth employment in Annex 1. Annex 2 addresses the gender challenges of post-conflict employment and advocates for a household well-being focus in employment programs.
