This brief examines how the World Bank’s ‘Gaza Emergency Cash for Work and Self-Employment Support’ project supports NGOs that are connecting unemployed youth with online work opportunities. The project will help fund skills training and digital job support to 750 youth (including 375 young women). The brief highlights challenges facing young women in the West Bank and Gaza – who experience high unemployment rates – and the strategies used to encourage their program participation and empower them to engage in e-work.

This brief examines how the World Bank’s ‘E-Commerce for Women-Led SMEs’ project addresses the constraints faced by small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) run or managed by women operating in Algeria; Djibouti, the Arab Republic of Egypt; Jordan; Lebanon; Morocco; and Tunisia. It highlights how the World Bank seeks to support women-led SMEs (WSMEs) in the Middle East North Africa region (MENA) in accessing global markets through e-commerce platforms, and the strategies used to help WSMEs access financial resources, develop capacity, and increase sales.

This Note unveils the underappreciated role of women in small-scale fisheries. Despite rising international recognition, women's catches remain overlooked. The research estimates millions of women participate, catching nearly 11% of the total small-scale haul, valued at billions of dollars. These catches not only feed families but also fuel local economies, highlighting the critical yet invisible role women play in global fisheries.

Every year, 25 million young people in Africa enter the labor market, more than half of them (14 million) in rural areas. By the year 2030, 320 million new jobs will need to be created, which makes Rural Youth Employment one of the most pressing and challenging topics, but also presents an enormous opportunity for economic development in capitalizing on this “youth dividend”. This report aims at highlighting good practices and lessons from GIZ programs on rural youth employment. 

This toolkit provides advice for young women who could become digital professionals and employers struggling to fill the job openings in their companies. The focus is on young women that are
Not in Education, Employment, or Training (NEETs) – hence they face various risks, problems, and negative orientations. 
 

This manual guides business development practitioners, the donor community, and other developmental experts wishing to implement an intervention to support and strengthen women growth-oriented entrepreneurs. It is specifically geared to practitioners wishing to improve their understanding of challenges specific to women entrepreneurs and practical ways of addressing these.

This study aims to identify what works, how and why to re-engage and retain out-of-school and at-risk adolescents and youth in education and explore for out-of-school adolescents and youth of secondary school age by country income group.  

This report focuses on the importance of youth for rural development, constraints that they face, and how to embed rural youth policy and investments in broader rural development strategies.

Using data collected from microenterprises in Gaborone, Botswana, this paper finds that women who cross over into male dominated sectors make higher profits and grow larger firms in terms of number of employees compared to women who operate businesses in female-concentrated sectors.

UN Women has developed Empowering Women Migrant Workers from South Asia: Toolkit for Gender-Responsive Employment and Recruitment. The Toolkit provides guidance on ensuring the protection and promotion of the rights of women migrant workers throughout the labour migration cycle.

There are over 1.2 billion adolescents in the world today, an all-time high. The vast majority of these 10-to-19-year-olds live in lower and middle-income countries (LMICs). Adolescence is a transformational phase of human life, but also a period of heightened risk and vulnerability. International literature identifies quality secondary education as a pivotal factor in raising future opportunities for adolescents. This publication explores the critical difference quality secondary education makes for adolescents, especially for adolescent girls and other vulnerable groups, explains VVOB's three priority dimensions of action for quality secondary education, and shares how VVOB puts this approach into practice in Rwanda, DR Congo, Uganda, Cambodia, Ecuador and Suriname.

The paper presents a qualitative case study of individuals who were all trained to be online freelancers using digital “gig” work platforms (e.g., Upwork) by “Virtualahan,” a social enterprise based in the Philippines. The findings indicate that online technology-facilitated employment has broader implications than an improved financial situation. Employment through online technology increased the informants self-confidence and how their families perceive them. 

This note analyses the gender profile of youth not in employment, education, or training (NEETs) in Georgia and Armenia according to individual and household characteristics, the gender differences in the school-to-work pathways, and the characteristics or risk factors that are correlated to being NEET and their differential effect between men and women.

This study draws on academic research and IFC’s experience with the private sector in FCS to derive lessons on how to engage with the private sector to foster growth, job creation, and stability.

Rural youth development focuses on three mutually-reinforcing factors: productivity, connectivity, and agency. The IFAD 2019 Rural Development Report creates a roadmap for development strategies that incorporate a focus on rural youth. 

This report connects different social and economic dimensions and looks at the key trends of the future of work from a disability perspective. It provides recommendations of action needed to shape the future of work in a more disability-inclusive way.

This webinar aims to improve the mental health of vulnerable populations with high exposure to trauma and limited access to mental health services, including communities in conflict and post-conflict settings and aims to equip community mentors with facilitation skills and curriculum resources to deliver evidence-based mind-body therapy programs.

This paper offers practical and relevant insights, including case studies capturing the journey of setting up private sector initiatives with refugee populations. It looks at their progress to date and key takeaways.

This report examines the workplace challenges and barriers facing disabled people and considers solutions to some of the key issues. It looks at the impact on disabled people where they cannot access adequate support and what works in improving their employment prospects.

The objective of the report is to explore the overarching factors in the Central African Republic (CAR) that contribute to the out-of-school youth phenomenon to provide recommendations for improving existing policies and programs.