This Knowledge Brief shares lessons on how the World Bank’s Promoting Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities in Social Protection and Employment Programs project team in Haiti worked to enhance the identification of persons with disabilities and provide them with skills for service sector jobs. The Brief highlights the importance of focusing on demand-driven skills, working with mainstream training providers, and proactive outreach to employers.

This study provides an overview of impact investment and skills creation in innovation, covering the main features of impact investment, the historical development of the phenomenon, and how it can be linked to the skills creation process. The study examines the emergence of impact investing and explains its principles and defining features. It maps some existing initiatives at European and local levels, presents examples of good and innovative practices in investments with social impact, and explores what practices and instruments for impact investment in innovation skills have been and/or could be applied in the Western Balkans.

This technical note provides support for applying a human rights-based approach (HRBA). The note begins with a short introduction to the HRBA and Sida’s PLANET tool. It then explains how human rights norms and standards underpin the thematic area. The note demonstrates how PLANET can guide staff in planning, assessing and monitoring a contribution through a series of guiding questions and examples. Finally, it provides a simple empowerment and capacity development analysis model and a list of additional resources to explore.

This World Bank report argues that the lack of market contestability in the MENA region makes it hard for new firms to start up and expand—so employment cannot grow fast enough to keep up with the growth of the working-age population. In addition, the report underlines the limited market dynamism and stunted job creation that continues to depress MENA's private sector. Finally, the report highlights the importance of understanding the policies and regulations hindering market contestability.

This UNDP report aims to understand the needs of LGBTI young people and Young Key Populations (YKP) in the AIDS response in the Asia-Pacific region, in their quest for more secure digital spaces and improved experiences of digital citizenship. The assessment also acts as guidance material for Youth-led organizations (Youth Lead and Y-Peer) to develop their own tools and resources for their communities and support grassroot level organizations to build online platforms for advocacy.

This World Bank report incorporates youth aspirations and employment module of High-Frequency Phone Surveys (HFPS) into multi-topic household surveys to present the differences in education and career aspirations across Ethiopia, Nigeria, and Malawi. The data collected is nationally representative, and age distribution is similar across countries. Understanding the aspirations and goals of the youth is expected to lead to the development of effective employment policies.

This paper presents evidence on how social protection and especially non-contributory cash transfers impact on individuals and households in low- and middle-income countries. The paper provides guidance on what policies, programming and interventions have been considered effective for Sida’s objective of creating better living conditions for people living in poverty and oppression.

This paper assesses the link between human capital, emission and technological change, using OECD data on employed individuals’ cognitive skills as well as industrial emissions. The findings demonstrate that higher levels of cognitive skills are associated with employment in industries that rely less on emissions. In addition, those industries have been able over time to reduce their reliance on emissions for production. The study provides evidence that across OECD countries less emission-intensive industries require more highly skilled workers – thus investments in education are critical to better enable the uptake of green technologies.

This research examines a specific aspect of the National Guard Youth ChalleNGe program, which is the provision of career and technical education (CTE) opportunities for program participants. The report relies on administrative data collected from all programs pertaining to their operations in 2017 and 2018, as well as interviews with select program staff in 2019. In this report, the authors highlight promising practices in CTE provision found in the literature. The report discusses implications and future considerations as more ChalleNGe sites consider introducing CTE into their programming and as more states consider establishing Job ChalleNGe, which provides post-secondary education and training to ChalleNGe graduates.

Mobile phone network coverage has increased worldwide over the past two decades. In advanced and emerging economies alike, young people are much more digitally connected than older generations. Digital technologies offer an opportunity to communicate with youth and collect data at a low-cost. Using digital methods like SMS has become more relevant to obtain timely data and information, especially with the current COVID-19 crisis. This note highlights the six steps taken by the Mexico Youth Labor Market Inclusion (MYLMI) project to design a successful short message system (SMS) outreach strategy to incorporate youth voice in their project.

This note highlights how the Mexico Youth Labor Market Inclusion (MYLMI) project used four strategies to incorporate youth voice in the design of their program. The project focuses on generating evidence on interventions that promote the labor inclusion of low-income youth into formal quality jobs in strategic productive sectors. The project is being implemented by the World Bank and the Government of Mexico in the state of San Luis Potosi.

An innovation of IFC, Vitae helps higher education institutions understand how well they’re preparing students for the workforce. It’s a data-driven approach for public and private institutions to evaluate themselves against a global benchmark of good practices. Vitae identifies employability gaps and proposes practical interventions to equip an institution to chart a path to transformation.

This note provides an overview of labor markets and job outcomes in the Horn of Africa. It provides an overview of issues related to jobs in the five countries of the region, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia. It first discusses labor market characteristics, notably labor force participation, unemployment and underemployment,as well as demographics of the labor force. Secondly, it compares employment patterns, focusing on the type and sector of employment. Finally, it looks at the limited information available on jobs outcomes – notably, wage levels.

This technical brief shares lessons learnt and practical examples from Ecuador, Rwanda, Vietnam and Zambia on how to scale up innovations in education for implementation in different contexts and then sustain the shifts in practice, policy, and each setting structures.

This guidance supports colleagues and partner organisations to develop and manage partnerships with young people in ways that align with the principles and steps within ‘Building Better Partnerships’, recognising that meaningful partnerships with youth-led organisations and groups may require different considerations and ways of working for our work together to flourish.

School closures during COVID-19 (coronavirus) led to an unprecedented global experiment in the delivery of remote learning. This report seeks to assess what lessons can be drawn from experiences of remote learning during COVID-19 in K-12 education, with a focus on low- and middle-income countries.

This study includes three main sections that have been organized in chronological order within this report: the first one, “What can we learn from education emergency responses in low- and middle-income countries?” analyzes the emergency education responses to the COVID-19 pandemic of over 120 governments from April until May 2020.

Short-term education and skills training programs are a popular way to meet the needs of unemployed, out-of-school youth by providing them with an opportunity to quickly acquire qualifications and skills that can lead to productive employment. This new paper reviews the global evidence to identify which programs are most effective at delivering results. Based on the findings, recommendations are offered for the future design of these training programs.

This report presents the findings from the second phase of the Research for Results (R4R) program. The R4R’s primary objective is to generate quantitative evidence on student and teacher performance, school environment and management, and qualitative evidence related to vulnerable youth at risk of dropping out. This evidence-based analysis is supported by policy recommendations and featured in the new government's five-year general education strategy (2021-2025).