2012 State of the Field in Youth Economic Opportunities

The 2012 "State of the Field" publication on youth economic opportunities (YEO) publication is a synthesis of the lessons learned, promising practices, and recommended next steps shared by more than 400 leaders from 50 countries each year at Making Cents International’s annual Global Youth Economic Opportunities Conference.

It looks at the field through the lens of "breakthroughs" with a focus on five learning tracks:

• Workforce Development (WFD);
• Youth Enterprise Development (YED);
• Adolescent Girls and Young Women (AGYW);
• Youth-Inclusive Financial Services and Capabilities (YFS); and
• Monitoring, Evaluation, and Impact Assessment (M&E).

Some communication-related strategies, among many in the document, include:

• Support enterprise development through awareness raising and stigma reduction on stereotypes and gender bias. For example: "Catholic Relief Services (CRS), the official humanitarian organization of the Catholic Church, and Navsarjan Trust, a local NGO (non-governmental organization) in Gujarat, India, have found that awareness-raising increased stakeholder’s comfort level with these populations. Program staff had to examine stigmas about young people before working with them. Employers had to be open to hiring at-risk or gang-involved youth. DAI, a global development organization leading a youth employment initiative in Sri Lanka, found that many employers had preconceptions about hiring young people from the conflict-affected North."
• Hold employers' forums to consult on how to create market-driven employment opportunities for youth and to partner with government, employers, and trade unions to promote available jobs through, for example, a mobile clinic to register youth and a jobs fair to select youth for employment training.
• As a policy strategy, advocate and assist governments to grow YEO programming to scale and connect more systematically with education systems to modernise curricula and promote skill-based education.
• Create an entrepreneur support "package" - including some combination of mentors, community involvement, and business plan competitions.
• In conflict-affected situations, build protective mechanisms into programming and analyse how interventions mitigate young people’s risk, attempting to ensure "do no harm" programming.
• Support development of quality financial services to promote and support young people’s timely access to savings systems, including youth-friendly market research for developing programmes on youth awareness of, confidence in, and education about financial services.
• Design monitoring, evaluation, and impact evaluation systems that include clear theories of change, precise indicators, effective tools, and more rigorous impact evaluations.

Entertainment, social media, and social marketing are a specific chapter focus because they hold "significant potential for the YEO field. Media, marketing, and entertainment can be used by YEO programs to: transmit important information and promote positive behaviors among young people; reshape how society views young people; improve communication about YEO programs to key stakeholders such as youth, donors, and colleagues in the field; and engage youth and others in a two way conversation."

Chapter sections include the following:
    Executive Summary
    Introduction
    Chapter 1: Workforce Development
    Chapter 2: Role of Government and Policy
    Chapter 3: Growth-Oriented Business
    Chapter 4: New Model: Micro-Consignment
    Chapter 5: Working with and Supporting Marginalized, Vulnerable and At-Risk Young People
    Chapter 6: Integrated Approaches to Achieve Economic and Nutrition Outcomes
    Chapter 7: Asset-Based Approaches: Building and Protecting Assets of AGYW
    Chapter 8: Youth-Inclusive Financial Services and Capabilities
    Chapter 9: Monitoring, Evaluation and Impact Evaluation
    Chapter 10: The Role of Technology in YEO Programming
    Chapter 11: The Role of Education Entertainment, Social Media and Social Marketing
    Chapter 12: Support for Youth Economic Opportunity in the MENA Region
    Chapter 13: Donor Strategies and Initiatives
    Chapter 14: Associations in Support of Youth Economic Opportunity
    Chapter 15: Conclusion
    Annexes