This S4YE Knowledge Brief presents emerging evidence of the scale of online gender-based violence in low- and middle-income countries and their impact on the participation of young women in digital sectors. It then outlines suggested policy responses and interventions.

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.

It is widely accepted that schools and other settings catering to youth can play an essential role in offering education in life skills and character. However, there exists a broad array of potential targets for such programs, suggesting the need for guidance on which targets are most likely to result in demonstrable and valuable results. This report attempts to integrate a broad literature addressing the universe of targets for skills development programs for youth. After identifying a set of 30 candidate skills to investigate further, research literature was reviewed to evaluate each skill on three dimensions. Measurability had to do with the extent to which adequate measurement tools were available for evaluating skill level, with emphasis on those tools specifically used for younger populations and available in multiple languages, particularly in Spanish. Malleability had to do with the extent to which there is evidence that interventions have the potential to modify skill level, with emphasis on those that have been extensively evaluated through randomized controlled trials. Finally, meaningfulness had to do with the extent to which evidence exists demonstrating that the higher levels of skill can result in consequential outcomes. Based on these criteria, 10 skills were selected for further review as having the most compelling evidence to date that they are life skills that matter: Mindfulness, Empathy and compassion, Self-efficacy/ Self-determination, Problem solving, Critical thinking, Goal orientation and goal completion, Resilience/Stress resistance, Self-awareness, Purposefulness, and Self-regulation/Self-control/Emotion regulation. The evidence for each is summarized. We finish with a review of key issues to consider in the design, implementation, and evaluation of life skills that matter.

This S4YE Discussion Note explores three critical and growing sub-sectors within the health workforce that could offer opportunities to increase youth employment: (i) new non-clinical support roles (ii) digital health jobs and (iii) jobs in the care economy. Overall, gaps in the health workforce supply chain must be addressed through investment in education, TVET infrastructure and resources to align workforce demand and supply for emerging healthcare jobs and the migratory health labor force.

The EU Blue Economy Report continues to analyse the scope and size of the Blue Economy in the European Union. It aims at providing support to policymakers and stakeholders in the quest for a sustainable development of oceans, coastal resources and, most notably, to the development and implementation of polices and initiatives under the European Green Deal in line with the new approach for a sustainable Blue Economy.

The Mercy Corps Ventures pilot detailed in this report was completed over three months at the start of 2021 to test whether digital stablecoins and mobile wallets could ease frictions and reduce costs in cross-border payments for un/underemployed youth completing microwork in Kenya, and the results are very promising.

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 document presents the Retirement Savings Laboratorys (Laboratory) main findings, lessons, and challenges from several pilot interventions aimed at promoting voluntary pension savings among independent and low-income workers in Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru.

This strategic brief shows aquatic food systems have the potential to provide livelihood opportunities for youth but challenges remain for them to join the sector. Multisector initiatives to improve access to training and finance as well as promote digital innovation can improve the participation of youth in fisheries, aquaculture and associated value chains. 

Building on the success of the Resilience Academy and Open Cities programs, the objective of this pilot study is to explore the feasibility of establishing a Digital Works for Urban Resilience Program, targeting local populations who have been impacted by COVID-19 restrictions.

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.

The main objective of this guidebook is to provide policymakers, workers’ and employers’ organizations and other stakeholders with a practical tool to help them in developing viable policy options to address the many challenges of extending social protection to workers in the informal economy and facilitating transitions to formality. 

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.