In October 2007, USAID’s Displaced Children and Orphans Fund, in close collaboration with the Microenterprise Development office, initiated the STRIVE (Supporting Transformation by Reducing Insecurity and Vulnerability with Economic Strengthening) Program. A five-year, $16 million effort, STRIVE uses market-led economic strengthening initiatives to benefit vulnerable children. In doing so, the program aims to fill current knowledge gaps on effective approaches to reducing the vulnerability of children and youth.
Managed by the Academy for Educational Development (AED) in concert with technical advisors from Action for Enterprise, ACDI/VOCA, CARE, MEDA, Save the Children, the IRIS Center and USAID, STRIVE is implementing up to five field projects in Africa and Asia between 2008 and 2012. Each project is pursuing a unique economic strengthening approach, ranging from savings-led finance to workforce development to value chain interventions. STRIVE is tracking and documenting the impacts of these diverse interventions on child-level indicators related to both economic (financial), and non-economic (e.g. health, nutrition, education) vulnerability factors. As a result, STRIVE aims to identify and demonstrate interventions that can sustainably increase incomes and document how such increases improve (or fail to improve) the lives of children.
- Afghanistan: Secure Futures (ASF), AED and MEDA
- Liberia: Agriculture for Children's Empowerment (ACE), ACDI/VOCA
- Mozambique: STRIVE Mozambique, Save the Children US
- Philippines: STRIVE Philippines, Action for Enterprise (AFE)
- STRIVE Monitoring and Evaluation, The IRIS Center
Margie Brand
STRIVE Program Director
AED
Center for Enterprise and Capacity Development
1825 Connecticut Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20009
USA
margie@eco-ventures.org
October 2007 to September 2012
The SEEP PLP for Youth and Workforce Development was initiated to identify, encourage, and disseminate replicable strategies for using market-driven program design to improve youth employment success and for measuring the effectiveness of these strategies. For more information, see the Youth and Workforce Development PLP description on the SEEP Network site.
- A Ganar/Vencer, South America (Partners of the Americas)
- Haitian Out-of-School Youth Livelihood Initiative (IDEJEN), Haiti (EDC)
- LEGACY Initiative, Liberia (IRC)
- Partner MKF, Bosnia-Herzegovina
- Rural Youth Livelihoods Program, Egypt (Save the Children)
- San Francisco Agricultural School, Paraguay (Fundacion Paraguay)
Laura Meissner
Meissner@seepnetwork.org
January 2008 - January 2009
The Social and Financial Empowerment of Adolescents (SOFEA) project is a BRAC initiative aimed at providing adolescent girls with financial and social support to enable them to empower themselves.
There are 600 million teenage girls living in poverty in the developing world. The majority of these girls live under conditions characterized by prevalent inequalities due to subordination, early marriage, frequent pregnancy, abandonment, divorce, abduction, war, domestic violence, marginalization and exclusion from both financial and social systems. SOFEA evolved out of the need to serve these girls, aged 14-25 years. This group has remained vulnerable and highly underrated in terms of its potential to bring about immense positive change. These girls can change not only their lives but also that of the communities in which they live through their impact on future generations: their children.
The SOFEA program comprises of the following vital components:
- A secure place for adolescent girls to socialize
- Life-skills training
- Livelihood training
- Financial literacy
- Savings and credit facilities
- Community sensitization
The components complement each other and create the complete support structure needed by an adolescent girl. The secure place provides a much-needed socialization space creating social cohesion. Life skills training raises girls’ level of social awareness, allowing them to make informed decisions. Livelihood training equips girls with the skills they need to engage in income generating activities, starting them off on the path towards financial independence. The financial literacy course provides insight into the financial aspects of managing a small business. The credit and savings facilities are a source for seed capital for the girls to start small businesses. To garner support from their families and the community, the program engages in community sensitization to ensure that even after BRAC leaves, these girls will continue enjoying their rights, as well as receive the attention and support that they deserve from their family and community.
The project aims at empowering girls to make more informed decisions about issues that affect their lives. Over time, these girls become more confident and independent through social and financial empowerment. By educating them, the girls will lead a healthy life and be informed mothers bringing up healthy families in the future.
The project is also active in Tanzania and Uganda, where it is known as Empowerment and Livelihood for Adolescents (ELA)
Farzana Kashfi
Head of SOFEA Program
BRAC Centre
75 Mohakhali
Dhaka 1212
Bangladesh
farzana.kashfi@gmail.com
Location
A Ganar/Vencer is a workforce development program for at-risk youth between the ages of 16-24 that is currently active in Brazil, Ecuador and Uruguay. Its innovative approach uses soccer and other sports as a teaching and motivational tool for youth, as well as an instrument to gain private and public sector support.
The goal of A Ganar/Vencer, which is a project of Partners of the Americas, is to develop the youth workforce into an asset for economic growth. The project focuses on developing sustainable partnerships, in the form of private sector sponsorships of key activities that build youth employability. The program reaches at-risk youth through a soccer-based curriculum that teaches transferable life skills, such as leadership and teamwork, and offers linkages to local private-sector businesses for employment or education continuation opportunities.
A Ganar/Vencer’s mission is to create a workforce development model using sports (principally soccer) as a way to teach, train and motivate marginalized youth and to motivate private and public sector investment in youth. This project works towards three main objectives:
- to build the partnership model, developing local offices with the capacity to involve all key stakeholders and to manage project activities;
- to develop a sports-based curriculum for teaching employability skills to youth;
- and to provide comprehensive market-driven employment training for at-risk youth, including employability skills.
Paul Teeple
pteeple@partners.net
Location
West Africa is at a turning point. After many years in camps in Guinea, refugees are now returning home to neighboring Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Ivory Coast. The large youth population (ages 15 to 24) plays an important role in moving the peace process forward during this crucial period. Through the LEGACY Initiative, IRC supports young people in accessing meaningful livelihoods opportunities through relevant and adaptable skills training, opportunities for civic participation, and the development of life skills.
LEGACY project in Ivory Coast
LEGACY project in Liberia
LEGACY project in Sierra Leone
Carrie Berg
Youth and Livelihoods Program Manager
Carrie.berg@theirc.org
Unemployment rates among youth in Sierra Leone are around 60 to 70 percent. In order to address this challenge, the IRC is working with the Ministry of Education Youth and Sports (MEYS) to revise the Junior Secondary School (JSS) curriculum so that JSS teachers will be equipped to deliver entrepreneurship and life skills training as embedded components of all subject syllabi. Entrepreneurship skills include financial management and project management, while life skills include problem-solving, decision-making, critical thinking, communication and conflict-resolution. Given the complex nature of challenges faced by youth in Sierra Leone, this combination of life and entrepreneurship skills helps young people navigate obstacles and shocks to livelihoods produced by social, political and economic changes.
Carrie Berg
Youth and Livelihoods Program Manager
Carrie.berg@theirc.org
The LEGACY Project in Liberia, an initiative of the International Rescue Committee (IRC), works to increase opportunities for formal schooling, skills training, and improved protection for children and youth. The project in Liberia supports the development of a vocational/skills training program driven by labor demand; enhances the quality of training in market-driven skills; creates linkages with the private sector and local businesses; enhances job-seeking abilities; targets marginalized at-risk youth, emphasizing gender equality; influences the design and monitoring of projects to ensure programs will give Liberian youth the requisite skills that will allow them to find work and earn a living wage; and builds networks of all the relevant stakeholders to increase their ability to influence policy and practice.
The main objective of LEGACY project activities in Liberia is to increase access of girls and traditionally excluded youth to quality and relevant technical and vocational education and training (TVET) in Lofa and Nimba counties. This objective will be achieved by:
- Establishing a National Working Group (NWG) to set standards and advocate for increased quality and relevance of and access to TVET by girls and traditionally excluded youth;
- Increasing quality and relevance of TVET in targeted TVET institutions in Lofa and Nimba counties;
- Increasing access of targeted vocational training centers (VTCs) by girls and traditionally excluded youth; and
- Increasing the income levels of targeted VTCs and providing support for more girls to access vocational training on an ongoing basis.
These initiatives will promote increased accountability of the Government and NGO vocational training practitioners to provide marginalized older youth with safe opportunities to learn and apply marketable skills, working to ensure the relevance and impact of vocational training.
LEGACY Initiative
SEEP PLP for Youth and Workforce Development
Abu Macpherson
abu.macpherson@liberia.theirc.org
Carrie Berg
Youth and Livelihoods Program Manager
Carrie.berg@theirc.org
Eighty percent of youth in Ivory Coast are unemployed. Young people, often too old for school, have poor vocational education options. The government-run vocational education and training providers lack uniform standards for quality instruction, including minimum standards for trade competency, safety and protection of trainees or mainstreaming gender.
Through the LEGACY Initiative, which supports youth in countries currently receiving large numbers of returnees from refugee camps in Guinea, IRC is rehabilitating 12 vocational centers with new equipment and relevant learning materials. IRC is further strengthening these centers by conducting a market assessment to inform the revision and piloting of new curricula based on market demands, good pedagogy and inclusion of transferable skills such as business and life skills. IRC also supports non-formal training centers in developing quality vocational education programs suitable for formal certification, and works with local businesses to promote safe and productive working opportunities for youth.
Carrie Berg
Youth and Livelihoods Program Manager
Carrie.berg@theirc.org
In every region of the world, youth face difficulty entering the labor market, however particular challenges face youth in the Middle East and North Africa, which has the highest concentration of unemployed young people. Save the Children has been working on different models that look at youth employment/livelihoods/entrepreneurship since 2006, work which has informed the Rural Youth Livelihood Program (RYL), a pilot program launched in 2008 as part of an integrated program targeting adolescents who are both in and out of school in Egypt.
The goal of the Rural Youth Livelihoods Program (RYL) is to equip adolescents in rural Egypt to successfully navigate the transition to work by:
- imparting effective strategies to generate and maintain means of living,
- enhancing youth well-being and ability to plan for their futures, and
- improve youths’ ability to withstand crises and shocks.
In order to achieve this goal the project has the following employment and enterprise development objectives for 2008:
- Build the assets and competencies of 400 young people to make informed choices about market relevant work opportunities.
- Enable 400 young people to map and manage resources available to them including market information and income from subsistence activities.
- Support 400 young people realize the potential of using financial services for themselves or others in their households to invest in skills building or grow a business
SEEP PLP for Youth and Workforce Development
Tamer Kirolos
Deputy Country Director for Programs
tkirolos@savechildren.org
Partner Microcredit Foundation (Partner) is a multiethnic, inter-entity organization with 44 offices covering all of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). As of June 30, 2008, Partner has a gross portfolio outstanding of approximately 184 million KM, 257 employees, 159 loan officers, 59,682 active clients and 61,500 active loans. Mercy Corps began microcredit operations in Bosnia in April 1997, and then spun Partner off into its own organization in late 2000. Partner MKF provides services to microentrepreneurs both for registered and unregistered business activities. Partner's target population is rural women. Currently, Partner has the leading position in the microfinance sector with 19% market share in terms of active clients in BiH.
Partner’s mission is to provide accessible financial services to the economically active population with no access to the commercial financing sources necessary for the start up of new or improvement of existing businesses and improvement of quality of life. One of Partner’s main roles is to assist in creation of new workplaces; so far Partner has created over 60,000 new workplaces, while over 200,000 workplaces have been sustained, thanks to loans from Partner.
Partner MKF plans to introduce a mentorship program to its clients, as a value-added service to complement regular loans. Thus far, they have conducted market research with other NGOs, and have conducted a focus group with existing clients. Partner plans to develop a mentorship program in the summer of 2008, and begin a year of pilot testing in September 2008. In addition, Partner plans to participate in a worldwide Mercy Corps effort, funded by the World Bank, engaging in controlled studies on which components of youth programming (e.g. training, loans, mentorships) provide the most impact.
SEEP PLP for Youth and Workforce Development
Selma Cilimkovic
selma.c@partner.ba
The 20 years of violence in Southern Sudan have meant that the majority of its young people have never known a time without war or violent conflict and instability. The loss of social and economic opportunities, security, trust in humankind, and a sense of hope for the future all have a devastating impact on the psychological and socio-economic well-being of youth and the communities that surround them. The war has also destroyed most of the physical infrastructure in the region, disrupted normal trade and production systems, and fractured traditional mechanisms for resolving or mitigating the effects of conflict. Formal and non-formal education opportunities, traditionally lacking in Southern Sudan, continue to be insufficient. Youth are particularly vulnerable to feeling disaffected and marginalized, as few opportunities exist for this group to acquire the capital and skills necessary to support themselves.
Since 2006, the IRC, in partnership with the Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children, has supported a 3-year youth livelihoods pilot project. The pilot project aims to contribute to the social and economic recovery of war-affected 
communities in Southern Sudan by equipping displaced and vulnerable youth with the transferable and adaptable skill sets needed to sustain their livelihoods. The program’s design was based on a marketable skill survey conducted jointly by IRC and Transitions International in 2006 that involved local leaders, youth and community members.
In the first phase of the program, a total of 138 beneficiaries were placed for skills training in various training centers and apprenticeship arrangements around Juba. The youth were also trained in peer education, business management and career skills. In addition, IRC has trained and supported community based organizations involved in youth and livelihoods activities. Some of the beneficiaries who completed training were provided with toolkits to assist them in starting their own enterprises and put into practice the skills they learned during the training, while other trainees received job placement assistance.
From January to April 2008 the IRC Juba office carried out research to assess the impact of its youth and livelihoods projects conducted between 2006 and 2007 in Juba. The study highlights both the successful aspects of programming such as increasing self-esteem and confidence of trainees as well as some of the challenges faced, including achieving gender balance, providing adequate follow-up and monitoring of trainees, clarity around partnerships with local government and challenges of attracting and retaining qualified staff in programs. The documented findings are expected to be published late in 2008.
Carrie Berg
Youth and Livelihoods Program Manager
Carrie.berg@theirc.org
2006 to 2008
The Reintegrating Youth in Post-Conflict Burundi through Livelihoods Promotion project targets both repatriating refugee youth and youth who remained in Burundi (ages 15 – 24), providing opportunities for exchange, collaboration and skills-building to peacefully transform lives. As 102,000 Burundian refugees return in 2008-2009, due to the closure of refugee camps in western Tanzania, young people will encounter steep challenges. Young men are at risk of recruitment to armed groups aligned along political and ethnic lines, which are proliferating in the run-up to 2010 national elections. Young women are vulnerable to abandonment, sexual and gender-based violence and limited economic opportunities. Youth face an under-invested education system unable to accommodate all students, particularly at the secondary level where spaces are fewer and applicants must have the necessary credentials and resources to gain entry. For those not lucky enough to secure a place in school, there are few other opportunities. Involving youth in livelihood programs while building on their strengths and potential is critical in smoothing their reintegration as well as counteracting the many risks and challenges they face.
The Reintegrating Youth in Post-Conflict Burundi through Livelihoods Promotion project provides a comprehensive skills training package that allows youth the flexibility to navigate the emerging market and a variety of employment opportunities. The program includes:
- Skills training program that will be certified by the Ministry of Education and Vocational Skills Training to ensure value and recognition of the program and linkages to the formal state-run vocational training programs,
- Start-up kits to apprentice graduates so they can begin to practice their new trades,
- Village Savings and Loan Associations (VSLA) where groups of graduates can pool money to a fund which members can borrow from during the business start-up phase, and
- Locally-relevant life skills curriculum and capacity strengthening of Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) to raise awareness of youth rights.
This initiative will draw on IRC’s extensive youth livelihoods experience in post-conflict countries including Ethiopia, Uganda, Liberia, Sudan, Afghanistan and Pakistan, allowing for empirically-based knowledge, best practices and lessons learned to be shared with the Burundi program. IRC will focus on training and supporting community-based structures and community leaders by building their capacity to protect and be accountable to children and youth in their communities.
Carrie Berg
Youth and Livelihoods Program Manager
Carrie.berg@theirc.org
