This webinar discussed how hackathons and innovation challenges help promote youth-led innovations. It presented the example of the Google.org Impact Challenge for Women and Girls and Hack for Earth and provided provide a practical example of a youth-led innovation and winner at Hack for Earth Hackathon in Expo 2020 Dubai: The Luminous Teen. It focused on responding to the following questions:

• How do hackathons and innovation challenges promote youth-led innovations?
• How do these events promote the creation of innovation networks?
• What are the best ways of identifying relevant and sustainable solutions?
• Who should be organizing this type of event? For whom? And what are the steps?

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Energy is at the heart of development and is essential to reducing poverty. Energy makes possible the investments, innovations and new industries that are the engines for economic growth and job creation. Currently, the global energy landscape is witnessing significant transformations, and renewable energies are playing an increasingly vital role in helping countries develop modern, secure energy systems. With this in perspective:

• How will the energy transition re-shape education systems and the skills required to secure energy-efficient jobs?
• What actions do young people want to see happen to deliver a sustainable energy transition?
• How are young women and men innovating to create efficient energy solutions, and how do these innovations promote employment?

This webinar shared the findings from the Global Youth Energy Outlook (GYEO), which is the first youth-led research project to engage over 40,000 young people ages 18 to 30 share their perspectives on the energy transition.

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The digital transformation is creating new job opportunities, especially for women, who are able to work from home and overcome time and mobility constraints. However, digital technologies also bring new risks—one of these is online violence. In addition to psychological harm, this form of violence may undermine the positive jobs effects of the digital transformation by increasing the likelihood that young women forgo or leave digital jobs. This webinar discusse based on the following questions:

• How does online gender-based violence impact women's labour market participation?
• How can youth employment programs that try to connect young women with potential digital jobs opportunities deal with the risk of subjecting women to online violence?
• What are some possible policy responses?
• What is the role of technology companies?
• And how can we create safer online spaces for all?

Technology can help provide youth with tools to make more informed decisions, grow their businesses, and create more jobs. However, the existing digital divide still leaves large populations of vulnerable youth disconnected and unable to access the modern skills and resources they need to find and create productive jobs. Aware of that, Orange, one of the S4YE's partners, has created the Orange Digital Centers, to provide digital and entrepreneurial skills to youth. From coding to business coaching, these centers provide training to students and young jobseekers to help them grow in their careers or start new businesses. In this webinar, Orange shared its experience setting up these Orange Digital Centers in Tunisia, Jordan and Ethiopia,  and how they have helped youth develop new businesses.

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Job matching platforms offer a variety of different services for job seekers, enterprises, and researchers. Beyond their traditional matching function, this type of platforms also collects valuable big data, which is essential for skills and labour market forecasts. However, not everyone is taking advantage of this valuable resource.  This webinar presents the approaches of two youth-led job matching platforms HaHu Jobs in Ethiopia and Huntr in the United Arab Emirates. It intends to address the following questions:

• What can we learn from the data collected through job matching platforms?
• How can job matching platforms support low and medium-skilled workers?

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While the world has experienced a steady increase in bandwidth speed over the last few years, widespread differences between developed and developing economies still exist. To tackle the connectivity challenge, numerous organizations have piloted innovative ways of offering learning, training, mentoring, and soft skills development programmes to the most disadvantaged. Many of these refer to the use of offline technologies that include programmes delivered entirely through SMSs or through low bandwidth usage Apps such as WhatsApp.

This S4YE webinar introduces innovative solutions with the potential of being replicated and implemented at a larger scale in low-bandwidth areas, focusing on the use of text-based solutions for learning.

Webinar recording here!

COVID-19 has tested the resilience of economies, societies, and individuals with lockdowns, social distancing, quarantine, job losses and disruptions in young people's social and educational development. In these unprecedented times, young people are find fewer available jobs and entrepreneurship opportunities.

The rapidly changing nature of work requires youth to have resilience – the ability to quickly adapt to changing circumstances and to bounce back from setbacks. However, many questions remain:

• Is a person's resilience determined by genetics or prior exposure to adversity?
• Can youth be "taught" how to be resilient?
• What could a resilience training program look like? 

This webinar discussed programs that have implemented activities to build emotional resilience among youth.

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For a country as large and diverse as India, the TVET system faces considerable pressure to address the growing need to equip youth with market-relevant skills to access jobs or start a business.  How should a country then prioritize its scarce resources to invest in a TVET  system at a sub-national level that meets the employers’ demands for a skilled labor force while also addressing the needs of the vulnerable populations? 

The Skill Development Priority Index, developed by National Skill Development Corporation, provides an analytical framework for identifying priority states and clusters that can benefit from well-targeted skill development programs.

This webinar is part of the ongoing knowledge learning strategy of S4YE that focuses on how organizations are developing innovative solutions to support youth employment.

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The COVID‒19 pandemic has accelerated the importance of flexible and remote jobs.  Such jobs could also help increase the inclusion of people with disabilities. In our recent report “Digital Jobs for Youth with Disabilities,” S4YE highlights strategies that programs have used to increase the inclusion of youth with disabilities in digital jobs.

In this webinar, S4YE shared key learnings from our report on the design and implementation of digital jobs & training programs for youth with disabilities. Speakers discussed possible solutions and challenges faced by practitioners in integrating assistive technologies, working with the private sector, and designing inclusive training programs to increase opportunities for youth with disabilities.

Speakers:

• Katherine Guernsey, Agency Disability Rights Coordinator, USAID
• Tiziana Oliva, Managing Director, Global Influencing and Programs, Leonard Cheshire
• Colin Blackwell, Founder, Enablecode
• P. Rajasekharan (Raja),  Co-founder, V-Shesh

Watch the recording from the session=.>>

 

The transformation of economies and societies towards technological innovation and sustainability will offer the young population better employment opportunities in the future. But youth have an active role in generating sustainable employment solutions for youth.

This webinar explored how organizations empower youth innovation and entrepreneurship for social and environmental impact and feature youth initiatives for the green economy:

• Learnings from Oxfam Novib and on what works and what does not in youth innovation programs based on its The Work in Progress! and Empower Youth for Work programs,

• Learning from Work4Progress platform and tech challenge solutions in India, including e-rickshaw initiative
• Presentation of Young Innovators’ solutions and perspective on challenges and opportunities for sustainable innovating for youth in Bangladesh, Nigeria, India and Ghana.

This webinar is part of S4YE’s Youth Innovating for Youth webinar series.

 

Watch the recording here!