The construction sector accounts for 37% of global greenhouse gas emissions and 7.7% of global employment. Given the scale of waste and pollutants generated by the industry and the potential for job creation, taking a circular economy approach to the construction sector could help to tackle two major development issues: youth unemployment and the climate crisis.

With a focus on the global south, this Solutions for Youth Employment (S4YE) webinar will explore the following questions:

- What opportunities can the construction sector offer for better, more environmentally friendly jobs for youth?
- How can governments and private sector actors collaborate to promote the adoption of circular practices along the supply chain?
- What are some strategies to advance the inclusion of youth and women in the industry?
- What is the role of digital technology in this space?

Register now to attend on Tuesday April 30th, 2024 at 10-11AM ET!

This S4YE Knowledge Brief describes how The Duke of Edinburgh’s International Award Foundation (the Foundation), an international charity and licensing body of The Duke of Edinburgh’s International Award (the Award); a Non-Formal Education and Learning framework for young people aged 14-24 years old, uses the Social Return on Investment (SROI) framework and has developed a social value methodology (SVM) to measure the impact that the Award has on its stakeholders, such as Award holders, adults who support Award delivery, and wider society. The Brief also shares useful recommendations for other youth organizations interested in measuring and enhancing their social value.

The blue economy is a promising sector for advancing youth employment and supporting structural transformation in low-income countries. But ensuring that job creation within this sector is environmentally sustainable requires a focused approach. 

At this S4YE webinar, we presented findings from an S4YE publication, Blue Economy: Structural Transformation & Implications for Youth Employment, and experts from the World Bank, FAO, WorldFish, and GIZ explored strategies for promoting youth-friendly and environment-friendly jobs in ocean-based industries. 

Watch the recording here! 

Social insurance schemes, traditionally built for stable, employer-employee jobs, often do not fit the reality of gig or self-employed workers with fluctuating incomes. This S4YE short note offers key design insights for reimagining social insurance products for self-employed, low-income, and/or gig workers. inspired by the "sachet revolution."

This Short Note is part of a series building on the report Working without Borders: The Promise and Peril of Online Gig Work. This note aims to provide some practical tips for practitioners like World Bank task team leaders in implementing online gig work programs to enable vulnerable populations - such as youth, women, persons with disabilities - to access online gig jobs to support their social and economic inclusion. Governments can use the potential of online gig work to build human capital, develop the nation’s digital skills, and provide opportunities to supplement household income.

This Short Note is part of a series building on the report Working without Borders: The Promise and Peril of Online Gig Work. The flexibility of working hours and location associated with online gig work uniquely positions it as an avenue to boost female labor force participation, especially in regions with limited local job opportunities. This short note takes a deep dive into gender-based disparities in access to these new forms of work, especially asking whether there is a gender gap in hourly rates that online gig workers ask for and earn from online tasks. The analysis uses data from over 19,000 profiles on one of the largest English-language freelancing platforms. Data from one of the largest global freelancing platforms shows that women quote approximately 10 percent lower hourly rates than men, likely reflecting a difference in confidence.

In November 2019, S4YE, in collaboration with the World Bank’s Social Protection and Jobs team in Ethiopia, held its first Regional Youth Employment Forum 'Learning from Innovations in Youth Employment' in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Click here to learn more. Click here to watch the video recordings.

In April 2019, S4YE held its first Partner Summit "Youth Employment: Solutions for Sustainable Impact" at the World Bank Headquarters in Washington, DC. This inaugural event brought together S4YE’s core partners in-person, including: Executives from S4YE's Private Sector Advisory Council; Members of S4YE’s Impact Portfolio, World Bank Group senior management and teams leading youth employment operations; Youth leaders who are part of the S4YE Youth Advisory Group; key donors from bilateral agencies; as well as technical experts and other stakeholders. Click here to learn more. 

Traditional social insurance schemes—designed for formal sector, salaried employees—often fall short when it comes to self-employed workers, leading to gaps in coverage. As jobs become increasingly flexible, particularly with the rise of the gig economy, social security systems need to keep up! This S4YE-IDB webinar explored the challenges associated with extending effective social insurance to self-employed workers and presented innovative, tailored solutions. 

Watch the recording here!

This Short Note is part of a series building on the report Working without Borders: The Promise and Peril of Online Gig Work. While local/regional platforms may not have received as much attention as global platforms, they play an important role for the local labor market and the local private sector ecosystem in many developing countries. This note addresses the following questions: What are the distinguishing features of local/regional gig online platforms, compared to global ones? What role can local/regional online platforms play on both the supply side (in supporting inclusion in developing countries) as well on the demand side (in addressing needs of local firms)? What challenges do local/regional platforms face in building a sustainable business model, and how can these challenges be addressed?.

This webinar explored the role of youth in transforming the agriculture sector, how the private sector can support meaningful youth engagement in smallholder supply chains through youth profiling, peer-to-peer learning, awareness campaigns, and more. The webinar responded to important questions including: Are rural youths really fleeing the agriculture sector? How can companies benefit from investing in youth across smallholder supply chains? Which digital innovations can reduce barriers to youth participation in agriculture?

The findings from this webinar are based on a recent IFC report, “Working with Smallholders: A Handbook for Firms Building Sustainable Supply Chains,” with a focus on the S4YE-led Youth Participation chapter.

Watch the recording here!

This Short Note is part of a series based on the report Working without Borders: The Promise and Peril of Online Gig Work that aims to promote discussion among policy makers and practitioners on opportunities in online gig work. Gig workers, including self-employed individuals, often find themselves in a "missing middle" when it comes to social insurance coverage. With a focus on developing countries, this note answers the question, “how can policy makers leverage online gig platforms to extend social insurance to informal gig workers?”.

This Short Note, the first in a series based on the report "Working without Borders: The Promise and Peril of Online Gig Work," aims to initiate discussions among policymakers and practitioners about online gig work opportunities, specifically focusing on youth employment. The report discloses that over 243 million young people globally are involved in online gig work, surpassing earlier estimates. This type of work presents governments, particularly in developing nations, with an opportunity to boost youth employment, for example, through tasks like IT and web design that demand minimal physical investment and cater to various skill levels.

Three key technologies—Artificial Intelligence (AI), Cloud and Blockchain, and Augmented and Virtual Reality (AR/VR)—are progressively integrated into creative economy sectors. Due to these technologies' diverse and evolving nature, the note refrains from quantifying their impacts or definitively predicting their influence on the creative economy. Instead, it focuses on discussing opportunities, concerns, and areas requiring attention for realizing benefits in terms of job creation and growth. 

The demand for Gig work is surging in developing countries, with anticipated continued growth. This short note explores current trends, addressing key questions about the countries driving demand, types of companies hiring gig workers, and factors influencing their decisions. Gig work platforms allow firms to adapt to market changes, enhancing competitiveness and productivity in a digital, globalized world. As online gig work, particularly microtasks, is poised to rise, businesses integrating AI highlight the importance of monitoring demand trends for effective policy and regulation development.

In this short note, we examine women's participation in online gig work, contrasting their motivations with those of their male counterparts and outlining the typical profiles of male and female gig workers regarding age, education, working hours, and involvement in freelancing communities. It delves into how these workers identify themselves in relation to the platform or their clients and highlights the key benefits they seek from online gig platforms. The note also identifies critical skills crucial for success in this domain, suggesting potential areas for performance improvement. Finally, it summarizes the aspirations of both male and female online gig workers, offering insights into the industry's future trajectory.

This report, part of the Solutions for Youth Employment (S4YE) Knowledge Brief series, highlights job matching platforms employed by public agencies that leverage advanced technology to connect job seekers and employers. It explores trends in technical features, deployment, and implementation of these platforms, catering to practitioners seeking insights into the practical implications of technology-driven employment solutions. The examples predominantly feature advanced countries, offering valuable insights for developing nations adopting a similar approach. The research methodology involves a blend of desk review and focused interviews with key individuals engaged in designing and implementing job-matching platforms.

This note is part of a series of Solutions for Youth Employment (S4YE) knowledge briefs focused on the Orange Economy or creative sectors. The first note in the series, “Orange Economy: As a Driver of Jobs for Youth,” addressed interventions that can enable job creation for youth in the orange economy. The second note in the series, “Unlocking Opportunities for Youth in the Orange Economy: Music in Africa,” focused on jobs and emerging trends for youth in the music industry in Africa. 

Online gig work poses both opportunities and challenges for governments and workers. On the upside, it offers prospects for income generation, especially in developing countries, where most people work in low-productivity, low-quality, often informal jobs. The virtual and often temporary nature of gig work also provides flexibility for often neglected groups such as women, youth, migrants, and people with disabilities. These jobs could be a stepping-stone to bet­ter-quality jobs for low-skilled workers by helping them learn critical digital skills and close the digital divide.

But most gig jobs offer little to no protection for workers, with uncertain income streams and no clear career pathways. Depending on local labor regulations, many gig workers are unprotected against unfair practices, abuse, or injuries. Gig work also raises challenges for managing data security and privacy.  
 

Promotion of the circular economy is currently taking place amid a global backdrop of growing employment precarity, socioeconomic inequalities and political instability. Current discussions primarily focus on the circular economy as a pathway for economic prosperity and growth via resource use and efficiency. But, there is little exploration of how the circular economy may impact people and their livelihoods. This accelerator session highlights how decent work and the circular economy agendas develop simultaneously for a just and inclusive transition that benefits both people and the planet. Experts from Circle Economy, World Bank and the ILO explore tangible ways to advance a decent work agenda in the circular economy interventions and share successful initiatives that can inspire decision makers and other stakeholders around the world to make the circular transition work for all. Watch the recording session here!

S4YE and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) have joined hands to establish a Creative Economy Alliance with a focus on supporting diversity and youth. The Alliance will foster global collaboration, provide a platform to exchange knowledge, experiences, and ideas, and find solutions to support the Creative Economy. The Kick-Off Meeting was the first step that joined representatives from remarkable organizations -such as UNCTAD, IADB, OECD, the Bristish Council, UNESCO, IFC, and Games Change for Africa- to discuss lesson learned, challenges and opportunities in the Creative Economy for Youth. Based on the information gathered, S4YE and GIZ aimed to launch the Alliance in September. Watch the recording session here! 

This is a joint report by S4YE, Circle Economy, and the International Labour Organization (ILO) and it is the first output of the broader ‘Jobs in the Circular Economy’ initiative between the three partners. The initiative aims to identify multiple gaps in the evidence base for circular jobs through collaboration with an international community of research institutions, industry representatives, social partners, governments and public bodies. This study explores research gaps and five key themes that summarize the focus of the current evidence base and generates better evidence in three main areas: 1) more in-depth and inclusive research on decent work and the circular economy, 2) global and social justice-led research and policy, and 3) joint advocacy and data partnerships.

Watch the recording session of the launch here.

Caregiving, whether paid or unpaid, is a skilled job that involves providing critical health, education, and social services for the protection of the young and old. However, where childcare or eldercare does exist, it remains too costly for the average household. This webinar is part of a series building up our recent study on strengthening the health sector while promoting new job opportunities for youth. In this event, we heard from Global Affairs Canada, Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator, IFC, and the World Bank Group to examine the challenges and opportunities the care economy can bring for young women and the skills needed to succeed. Watch the recording webinar here.

This S4YE’s Discussion Note explores the role of the blue economy, especially fisheries, as a source of productive and sustainable jobs for youth. The research discusses the importance of understanding how the blue economy is changing in response to trends in technological innovation, environmental concerns, and the move towards a circular economy, which in turn affects the skills that youth would need to have in order to hold productive and meaningful jobs in the blue economy. Finally, the note discusses four main types of policy interventions that can help support job opportunities for youth in ocean-based industries: 1) deepening youth employment data analysis, 2) closing blue skills gaps, 3) improving the attractiveness and awareness of blue careers among youth; and 4) promoting youth entrepreneurship and innovation in blue economy sectors.

Globally, women are underrepresented in online gig work, and results from our upcoming study based on a global survey point to only a quarter of gig workers being women. While there are expectations that online platforms would facilitate access to work for women, the potential of online gig work to support female labor force participation has yet to be fully tapped. In celebration of International Women’s Day, we gather remarkable experts to discuss how the online gig economy can bolster labor opportunities for women and contribute to closing the gender gap.

Watch the recording webinar here!

Recent estimates predict that the metaverse economy could be worth up to $13 trillion with 5 billion users by 2030.  The metaverse job market is expected to reach an $800 billion valuation by 2024, and 10,000 jobs are estimated to be added to the metaverse market in the next years. Metaverse is trending and many Tech giants – together with fashion and luxury brands – have already invested billions in the new digital space. This webinar brought together specialist from the Metaverse field to discuss how the Metaverse is transforming the world of work, what skills young people should have, and what are the challenges and opportunities for young professional creators. Access to the recording webinar here.

The pandemic has underscored the essential value of healthcare workers in ensuring economic resilience and social development. We can certainly have vivid memories of healthcare workers’ efforts during the pandemic to deliver high-quality service despite their exhaustion. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has worsened the global shortage of nurses, and currently, there is an estimated shortage of up to 13 million nurses worldwide. Despite the challenges, crises can be taken as opportunities. This webinar discussed how international organizations, the public, and the private sector can work together to develop initiatives that provide healthcare workers with solid skills to fill the gap in the health labor market. This webinar was organized jointly by the Skills Global Solutions Group.

Watch the recording webinar here!

The recent pandemic has underscored the essential role health workers play in ensuring a nation's socio-economic resilience. However, there is a growing shortage of health professionals, and around 40 million health jobs need to be created by 2030. At the same time, several countries continue to face the persistent challenge of youth unemployment -64 million unemployed youth and 145 million youth living in poverty.  In this regard, could health workforce shortages offer an opportunity to prepare and employ young people for meaningful work in the health sector? This presents a win-win opportunity for governments, the private sector, and civil society to work together to build more robust health systems while simultaneously creating job opportunities for youth in the health sector. This is an opportunity to invest in human capital, and stronger health systems, by putting youth employment at the core of the global policy agenda.   

This webinar introduces the key findings of the latest S4YE report, “Strengthening the Health Sector while Promoting Jobs for Youth”, that highlighted three sub sectors in health that could especially provide new job opportunities for youth i.e.- digital health, care economy, and non-technical support roles. This webinar especially discusses opportunities in digital health. 

Watch the recording webinar here! 

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the risk of underinvestment and shortages in the health workforce, globally. Health workforce shortages offer an opportunity to prepare and employ young people for meaningful jobs in the health sector, while also supporting further development of the health ecosystem. Three critical and growing sub-sectors within the health workforce 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.

In this Knowledge Brief, we highlight different ways in which youth employment projects in S4YE’s community of practice, the Impact Portfolio, a network of 44 high-potential and innovative youth employment projects, are using digital tools for M&E strategies and data collection methods. Based on recent and ongoing discussions with our partners, we see common trends on the 1) importance of developing centralized data management systems, 2) promoting awareness and quick feedback, 3) enhancing data accuracy 4) increasing cost effectiveness of M&E tools, 5) broadening outreach with SMS and smart phones, and 6) using dashboards and data visualization. Overall, we see several ways our partners are using digital technology to be effective in monitoring and reporting impact.

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?

Watch the recording here!

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.

Watch the recording here!

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?

Access the webinar recording here!

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.

Watch the recording here!

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 gender-based 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 Knowledge Brief presents emerging evidence of the scale of such problems 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 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.

With rapid changes in technology and the recent pandemic, remote work is fast becoming the new normal. While remote work has brought in more flexibility, it has raised its own set of challenges. What does this mean for youth, who are new entrants to the labour market? In this new “online“ world, how are internships being structured? Can internships be designed entirely “virtually”?

This webinar discussed a recent initiative led by the private sector to experiment with virtual internships. The Alliance for YOUth (all4YOUth), a group of private sector companies, have developed virtual internship guidelines.

Watch the recording here!

This knowledge brief highlights the relevance and challenges of business incubation services for youth in rural areas. It is based on discussions held during an operations clinic organized jointly by S4YE and GIZ in Fall 2021. This brief showcases learnings from the projects presented during the clinic and provides examples of design elements of business incubation services for youth in rural areas. These include 1) Creating a network-based ecosystem for rural incubation, 2) Promoting on-site incubation as opposed to co-working (office) space ("incubator without walls"), 3) Guaranteeing access to markets by involving the private sector, 4) Screening entrepreneurs, 5) Combining different types of financial sustainability models based on local conditions, and 6) Promotion of pro-women incubation to address the "triple burden" faced by young women in rural areas.

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?

Watch the recording here!

This Knowledge Brief focuses on platforms that have leveraged novel digital technologies to deliver location-agnostic mentoring solutions to youth. We explore 6 key operational areas where innovations have helped make e-mentoring processes more effective and efficient- 1) Recruitment of mentors and mentees using online marketing strategies, leveraging online networks and professional communities like LinkedIn. 2) Screening potential mentors and mentees through algorithms that match key pre-set criteria. 3) Using blockchain technology and artificial intelligence to make the best possible mentor-mentee matches. 4) Conducting mentoring by bringing together mentors and mentees on virtual meetup platforms like Zoom, Skype, and Google Meet. 5) Providing ongoing support, supervision, and monitoring through a library of online resources, ensuring a member of the senior team is available for answering questions virtually, and setting parameters and milestones that need to be met through the process. 6) Ensuring an appropriate closure of the mentor-mentee relationship by addressing challenges faced during the program and providing recognition to outstanding mentoring achievements.

The Brief also addresses how e-mentoring platforms can adapt their operations to provide mentoring in areas with low bandwidth or no connectivity. This will enable platforms to be more inclusive in their approach and include a more diverse mentee population.

This infographic highlights five strategies that programs have used to overcome challenges and increase access of youth with disabilities to digital jobs.

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!

Countries and companies are re-thinking traditional dynamics of production in order to move away from a linear “take-make-dispose” approach to more circular processes that reduce waste and extend product life spans. 

But what does this mean for jobs, especially for youth? The adoption of circular models can create more job opportunities, especially in the services sector. Recycling, reuse, repair, and maintenance services (that are key components of a circular model) are labour-intensive and could create more entry-level opportunities for youth. This shift towards circularity will also redefine existing jobs. A textile garment worker, for instance, will not only need to sew buttons but will also need to work with new varieties of sustainable fabrics. From a skills perspective, the shift to a circular economy will demand multidisciplinary skills, deep product design skills, digital skills, but also transversal and soft skills that will change rapidly, as new business models emerge.

The Note shows that the shift to the circular economy has potential for job creation- activities like waste collection, recycling, repair, and remanufacturing are more labour-intensive and could be important segues to job creation.

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.

Watch the recording here!

This report highlights six strategies to cultivate emotional resilience among youth, drawn from discussion with global experts and practitioners of youth employment programs. These strategies include: (i) using a hybrid approach to enhance both coping and thriving abilities in schools; (ii) restoring refugees’ self-agency & ‘making meaning’ mindset; (iii) incorporating resilience-building strategies in traditional interventions that support entrepreneurs; (iv) adopting low cost, self-directed, digital interventions to support youth at scale in difficult times; (v) adopting mindfulness to release stress and increase self-awareness when engaged in fast learning and high-pressure environments; and (vi) designing work readiness training journeys that integrate both technical and socio-emotional skills.

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.

Watch the recording here!

Last year, the S4YE team published 'Orange Economy: As a Driver of Jobs for Youth,' which highlighted how the creative sectors could be a potential source of economic opportunities for youth.

Following up on that report, S4YE did a deep dive on potential opportunities in the Music Industry in Africa, which is growing rapidly. Access to technology has especially enabled growth in the music streaming industry, creating new opportunities for young African musicians in Nigeria, South Africa, Egypt, Morocco, Algeria etc. 

This Knowledge Brief highlights examples of music enterprises in Africa and types of opportunities for youth in the music ecosystem broadly.  The Brief also suggests some strategies for translating music into economic and social benefits.

The need for digital skills across all sectors and jobs has accelerated since the beginning of COVID19. A recent joint IFC-WB study found that demand for digital skills training will surge in the coming decade and that significant opportunities exist to increase the role of the private sector in meeting the digital skills gap. Education providers, policy makers and the private sector will need to work together to address the challenge. 

How do education institutions address the growing demand for digital skills? What role do big tech and smaller private sector education technology companies play? And how can governments collaborate with the private sector to reach underserved populations at scale? The webinar co-organized by S4YE and IFC dug deeper into these questions through a panel-style session with leaders from the space, including higher education, big tech, local education technology companies and government.

Video recording =>>

The 2021 virtual Sustainability Exchange took place on June 9. With the world reawakening and economic activity rebounding, sustainable infrastructure in emerging markets will play a critical role in ensuring an inclusive COVID-19 recovery and a more equitable future. The event explored unique viewpoints and paths to solve challenges related to mega-trends and emerging industry issues, with a focus on 1) Climate change and just transitions in energy and mining, 2) Urban transit and smart mobility, 2) Technology, transparency, and responsible leadership, 3) Sustainability-linked finance and 4) Gender equality and youth inclusion.

S4YE moderated the breakout session on Digital Solutions for Rural Livelihoods focused on exploring how technology can help youth agri- entrepreneurs learn and make informed decisions, increase productivity and incomes.

Speakers:

• Marisa Conway, Chief Learning Officer, Arifu -  a personalized learning company that offers agronomic advice and financial skills training to farmers through mobile phones
• Brian Bosire, Founder of UjuziKilimo -an agricultural technology company bringing precision farming technology to small-holder farmers

The recording of the session is available online=>> 

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.

• 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!

The outbreak of Covid-19 has accelerated efforts by practitioners to move learning, skills building and mentoring online rapidly. Practitioners need to address how they will reach the youth in low bandwidth areas. If this is not confronted, the youth in rural, remote, and disconnected areas will be further marginalized. The webinar featured selected strategies identified in the recent S4YE Knowledge Brief on Online Learning Models for Youth in Low Bandwidth Areas, such as mobile vans used by Save the Children Skills-to-Succeed Program in Bangladesh and bite-size mobile learning courses of Every1Mobile.

Speakers:

• Monica Caminiti, Director, Skills to Succeed, Save the Children
•  Atik Chowdhury, Project Director, Skills to Succeed- Bangladesh, Save the Children
• Jocelyn Williams, Director, Business Development, Every1Mobile

 Discussant:

• Iñaki Sánchez Ciarrusta, Analyst, Global EdTech Team, World Bank

Watch a recording from the session=>>

COVID-19 has accelerated interest in the potential of digital technologies, including those that can offer opportunities to youth in agriculture. What are some ways digital solutions can help youth entrepreneurs in agriculture (agripreneurs) make informed decisions, increase productivity and incomes?

This new S4YE Knowledge Brief “Digital Solutions for Youth Agripreneurs” delves into how digital solutions can address four key constraints for youth agripreneurs:  1) access to finance, 2) access to inputs, 3) access to markets, and 4) capacity development. We discuss some digital tools and services which can help address these four constraints, e.g., mobile banking, alternate credit scoring, crowdfunding, real-time pricing, e-Agri extension, precision agriculture. Customization of services (e.g., addressing gender intersectionality, localization) can lead to increased adoption by youth agripreneurs. But there are associated risks, including the lack of data privacy, cybersecurity breaches which need to be addressed by policymakers.

On Wednesday, 28 April, the Vitae team presented how they are helping higher education institutions to improve their graduate employability. A demo of the benchmarking tool was presented, which measures the standing of a higher education institution in its implementation of best practices that drive employability, then makes recommendations to positively impact career outcomes for graduates.

The webinar offered an overview of the Vitae product offerings:

• Employability Benchmarking – Vitae’s benchmarking exercise enables a higher education institution to quickly self-assess its employability practices through a short questionnaire.
• 360° Assessment – This review of current practices helps an institution determine whether course selection and instructional processes are aligned with labor market needs if there are adequate mechanisms for student service provision, and if systems are in place for collecting and acting on industry feedback.
• Vitae Bespoke Advisory Services – After the 360° assessment, institutions can request IFC’s advisory services to provide training, guidance, and advice during the implementation process.

Co-hosted by the Skills Global Solutions Group, COREHEG, and S4YE.

Recording of the session=>> 

In this Knowledge Brief, S4YE addresses the need of tackling low bandwidth challenges for youth learning opportunities, job creation and inclusion. The brief highlights how some programs are developing solutions to reach youth in low bandwidth areas. Five different strategies were identified for youth employment programs that can be employed to integrate the youth in low bandwidth areas by adapting their learning content to an online delivery model. These strategies include 1. Download offline; 2. Use Raspberry Pi; 3. Utilize bite-sized courses; 4. Employ mobile vans; and 5. Leverage ad hoc networks. Learning from successful initiatives and taking our strategies as a first guideline will help practitioners to adapt their approach and ensure that the youth can reach their full potential –even in low bandwidth areas.

On Tuesday, 13 April, the S4YE hosted a webinar together with Commonwealth of Learning on how TVET institutions can approach teaching practical skills online through a blended model. For more than 30 years, the Commonwealth of Learning (COL) has focused on the potential for open and distance learning to increase access to quality education in developing countries.  Even before the pandemic, COL was piloting a model blending online and workplace learning to make TVET more accessible and relevant to help solve the global skills development challenges. However, the pandemic has broadened interest in online methods.

This webinar covered COL’s experiences so far, including:
•    The opportunity to innovate to overcome existing TVET challenges building on decades of experience in Australasia, Africa, and Asia,
•    COL’s model of online plus workplace learning,
•    Lessons from projects that worked on teaching practical skills in trades like construction, woodworking, and cell phone repair in Nigeria, Zambia, and Tuvalu.

Watch the video recording here!

The Brief summarizes five ways in which private companies are stepping in to support youth in these difficult times: These include 1) Support for Digital Skill Building, Online Learning/Training and Employment for Youth; 2) Support to Build Resilience among Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises; 3) Support for Youth Focused NGOs; 4) Immediate Emergency Support to Public Authorities; and 5) Internal Measures to Ensure Business Continuity within the Organizations.

The objective of this Brief is to a) acknowledge the work our private partners are doing to support youth; and b) enable partnerships between these private sector-led initiatives and other S4YE partners/organizations/World Bank/IFC teams who are working towards the same goal.

In sub-Saharan Africa, the number of youth is expected to more than double by 2050 and reach almost 600 million by 2100, with most of them living in rural areas. Countries have to urgently create employment opportunities in rural areas to reap the demographic dividends of this ‘youth bulge’. Jobs potential for youth in rural development is presumed but little is known about specific strategies that turn this potential into actual job opportunities. In our upcoming webinar, we will discuss strategies that work such as collaboration with the private sector, improving perceptions of agriculture among rural youth, and scaling activities by involving youth and through national and local partners.

Experts from GIZ shared the learnings from their latest report, “What Works in rural youth employment promotion?” and highlight the need for an ‘integrated’ approach for rural youth employment promotion‒ with program activities on both the supply side and the demand side of the labor market. The webinar also featured projects from African countries‒ Employment Promotion Programme (EPP III) Sierra Leone & Agricultural Value Chains for Sustainable Development (A4SD) to showcase their ‘integrated’ approaches, results, and critical success factors, including how they are adapting to COVID-19. The webinar recording can be found here. The presentation can be downloaded from below. 

Providing support to young people through this crisis is crucial as the pandemic has disproportionately affected young people and women. Global Mentorship Initiative provides guidance and business skills to underserved college students through online mentorship, with over 1,000 students and mentors currently involved in the program.

• Learn about Global Mentorship Initiative’s online mentorship model and practical examples of how the team has designed and rapidly scaled the program,
• Get to know about challenges faced by young people entering the global workforce today, and
• Hear about mentors’ and students’ experiences from around the world.

This webinar is part of the ongoing knowledge learning strategy of S4YE that focuses on how organizations are developing innovative solutions to support youth in the wake of COVID-19.

Watch the video recording here!

This webinar is part of the ongoing ‘S4YE - Insights from the Private Sector’ series and focuses on how companies are developing innovative solutions to support youth in the wake of COVID-19.
 
COVID-19 continues to remain a global health crisis, disrupting on-campus learning, driving widespread unemployment, and leaving many searching for answers about employment opportunities in the future. Amid the uncertainty, the edtech companies and governments are finding new ways of supporting unemployed workers. 

The webinar highlighted how IFC and the private sector are working with governments on reskilling/upskilling the workforce and showcase lessons learned by  Coursera, an IFC client, in launching and scaling its Workforce Recovery Initiative in the wake of COVID. The recovery initiative enables governments to provide unemployed workers free access to their course catalog, helping them develop the knowledge and skills needed to become re-employed quickly. Coursera activated more than 220 programs for governments across 100+ countries and 25 US states. These programs have benefited more than 1M learners to date. This webinar focused on practical design elements required to structure large-workforce development programs, government agencies' role, and share lessons learned from the Philippines, Costa Rica, and Malaysia. You can also access the recorded webinar here. The presentations can be downloaded from the link below. 
 

During the session, Anita Tiessen, CEO of Youth Business International (YBI), focused on 4 key insights drawn from YBI’s work of supporting young entrepreneurs during COVID. She highlighted the importance of business pivots, the role of digital solutions, mentoring youth to build emotional resilience and inclusiveness in outreach. Marija Ralic, Lead of Google APAC from Google.org shared how their organization is supporting non-profit organizations with grants, technology, and volunteers. Roshni Venkatesh, Global Giving Lead in Accenture, highlighted the Skills to Succeed initiative and the Sky’s the Limit project, (an innovative digital platform that connects young entrepreneurs with business professionals, to get the mentorship they need). YBI with support from Google.org and Accenture, leveraged their 20 years of experience and 70 members and delivery partners across 65 countries to rapidly respond to meet the needs of entrepreneurs. This has led to YBI reaching over 130,000 entrepreneurs during the pandemic, to help them protect their businesses.

The session was also joined by Neelima Tippavajhala, Founder and CEO of Cocotang India and a young entrepreneur who shared her journey of grit and resilience during the pandemic. Neelima’s organization produces natural coconut drinks in India. BYST and YBI provided her with financial and moral support that allowed Cocotang to survive and thrive as the business added new types of drinks to their menu for local customers.

Watch the video recording here!

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.2 Digital technologies offer an opportunity to communicate with youth and collect data at 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.1 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.

This Note is part of S4YE’s new “How To Series” that provides a quick step-by-step guide for practitioners and policymakers working to design new youth employment programs. This series covers a range of youth employment related topics identified in collaboration with S4YE partners and World Bank Group teams. You can find access to the English version below and the Spanish version here.

Early work experiences are crucial in shaping future employment status and earnings. Youth often face constraints in finding meaningful employment due to a lack of market-relevant skills and work experience. The lack of appropriate skills training can deter firms from hiring them and or offering better wages. Achieving better job outcomes for youth requires improving the interaction of the labor market's supply and demand side.

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.1 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.

This Note is part of S4YE’s new “How To Series” that provides a quick step-by-step guidance for practitioners and policymakers working to design new youth employment programs. This series covers a range of youth employment related topics identified in collaboration with S4YE partners and World Bank Group teams. The English version is attached below. Please find the Spanish version here.

This webinar is part of the ongoing ‘S4YE - Insights from the Private Sector’ series and focuses on how companies are developing innovative solutions to support youth in the wake of COVID-19. As the global pandemic continues, diverse communities have lost a disproportionate number of jobs and are facing new challenges in finding decent jobs in addition to their pre-existing challenges. Private sectors and non-profit organizations are finding new ways of supporting economic empowerment for the minority and diverse communities by ensuring digital access for all, promoting business equality, addressing youth unemployment and eliminating the gender gap.

In the session, Arielle Gross Samuels, Head of Global Business Strategy and Engagement from Facebook, shared her company’s  commitment of $100 million to 30,000 businesses and equality programs. These initiatives have been achieved through global programs such as the #SheMeansBusiness and Blueprint project, which provide entrepreneurial women with the support to make valuable connections, share advice on using Facebook tools, and to further their digital marketing skills through the Facebook and Instagram platforms. Hyacinth Vassell, Industry Vice President of Innovation Engineering from the Association for Enterprise Opportunity shared the importance of addressing bias and stereotypes when designing economic programs. This can be achieved with continuous sensitivity training and being intentional about the project’s design.

Watch the video recording here!

As we continue to operate remotely, entry-level and diverse job seekers face additional challenges in finding the right jobs. As learning and education systems are disrupted by the pandemic, the private sector is finding new ways of supporting under-represented groups of youth to become job ready and build careers in the digital industry. S4YE - Insights from the Private Sector recently featured Nicole Goldstein from Facebook and Darryl Pinkus from Coursera who spoke about their recent partnership on a social media marketing professional certificate program. This session focused on the insights and learnings in implementing an online learning platform. The speakers shared their experience of launching the certified course in the wake of COVID-19. The focus of the professional certificate program is to provide participants with hands-on, project-based training designed to be completed within 5 months and provide direct connection to open roles with an industry-recognized certificate. The program aims at people with no prior industry experience as well as under-represented, diverse groups of job seekers who want to build careers in the digital marketing industry.

Watch the video recording here!

This webinar is part of S4YE's recently launched Brief on How Technology Can Help Incorporate Youth Voice in Employment Programs. As organizations around the world have transitioned to remote operations, moving to virtual engagement can be challenging. Youth employment organizations are finding creative ways to engage young people through technology. This is to ensure that their projects efficiently meet the current local market demands and address the constraints faced by youth.

In this webinar, S4YE was joined by two partners Educate! and Africa's Voices Foundation. Emmanuel Kalyebi, Senior Program Manager of Educate! and Samuel Kimeu, Executive Director of Africa's Voices Foundation spoke about how their organizations have used radio technology, SMS platforms, and social media tools to engage young people in Africa. This session focused on the design and implementation of incorporating youth voice into youth programs, and delve into the factors, practical challenges and opportunities of doing so. 

You can find full access to the video recording here. 

The role of the private sector in advancing youth employment is crucial. As part of our Insights from the Private Sector series, S4YE recently hosted an engaging discussion with Bickey Russell from Google who talked about Kormo Jobs, a job-matching and career development app, that is operating in Bangladesh, Indonesia and India. The other two speakers, Kazi Inam Ahmed, Director of Gemcon Group and Sabbir Nasir, Executive Director of ACI Logistics (Shwapno) provided practical insights into the implementation of the Kormo Jobs app in their local businesses in Bangladesh.

The webinar highlighted Google's experience of creating Kormo app to cater to the emerging needs of informal young job seekers and employers in the wake of COVID-19. You can find the full presentation in the link below and the webinar recording here.

The World Bank's Youth to Youth Community in collaboration with S4YE hosted Zhenia Viatchaninova Dalphond (one of the winners of last year’s Y2Y Youth Innovation Fund). The session presented the lessons learned from the Youth Innovation Fund pilot project focusing on online work training for vulnerable youth in Ukraine during the lockdown. The pilot project was one of the case studies of the recent S4YE publication “Orange Economy: As a Driver of Jobs for Youth”. 

COVID-19 has put the jobs of millions of youth, especially in the informal sector, at risk. Estimates suggest that more than one in six young people have stopped working due to the pandemic. S4YE joined the Local Economic Development Series on October 7th, 2020 session to explore strategies to create employment and entrepreneurship opportunities to facilitate longer-term resilience and stronger recovery from COVID-19. The session brought together panelists from S4YE's network to discuss how organizations are reviving small and medium businesses, increasing private sector engagement, leveraging new digital job opportunities, and increasing virtual learning access for vulnerable youth.

Opening remarks were given by Ian Walker, Manager, Jobs Group, World Bank and Ingo Wiederhofer, Practice Manager, Social Sustainability and Inclusion Global Practice, World Bank. The fire side chat was moderated by Namita Datta,  Program Manager, S4YE. The speakers included:

Mamadou Biteye, Vice President, Social Impact for Central Europe, Middle East, and Africa, (CEMEA) region at Visa, based in Dubai,

Rob Urquhart, Lead, Knowledge & Research, Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator,

Akshay Kashyap, Deputy Head, Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojna, National Skill Development Corporation, India, and

Colin Blackwell, Founder, Enablecode.

You can find full access to the slides, webinar recording, and other resources here.

As youth unemployment rates continue to rise across the globe due to the COVID-19 pandemic, youth employment practitioners must ask how to put youth voice in the driving seat of programs and policies for dignified work. Incorporating youth voice into the design of youth employment programs ensures that organizations understand how to efficiently meet the current local market demands and address the specific constraints facing youth. Additionally, it ensures that organizations consider a range of factors that are based on gender, socio-economic status, disable youth, and indigenous youth to ensure that the best approach is being undertaken by youth employment programs.

In this Knowledge Brief, we discuss the importance of incorporating youth voice in the design of youth employment programs and the factors organizations must consider when utilizing radio, short message service (SMS) text, and social media platforms. This Brief also features how technology platforms have been used by S4YE’s Partners and the World Bank, to incorporate youth voice in projects. The Note highlights practical insights, challenges, and solutions that can help youth practitioners.

In this Knowledge Brief, we highlight different ways in which youth employment projects in S4YE’s community of practice, the Impact Portfolio, are adapting their strategies and delivery models in response to COVID‒19. Based on recent and ongoing discussions with our partners, we see six main trends that programs are using to maintain operational and programmatic continuity. These include scaling of virtual operations, crowdsourcing ideas from youth, accelerating remote learning, encouraging youth voice, increased support for micro, small and medium enterprises, and leveraging new growth opportunities. Overall, we see a deepening and widening of the ways our partners are using digital technology to be effective and to reach more youth in these challenging times.

Gülcan Yayla, Co-Founder and CEO of Kodluyoruz (We Code), and Youth Advisory Group (YAG) board member introduced the journey of how their organization scaled their award-winning technology-based skills development initiatives in all 81 cities of Turkey, reaching more than 30,000 people in only less than four years. The webinar elaborated on the importance of youth communities in achieving a sustainable and scalable skills program anywhere in the world. Kodluyoruz is a social enterprise working to make Turkey a worldwide talent hub for technology sector while addressing the youth unemployment and underemployment problems. Gülcan holds an MBA and MSW Joint Degree from Washington University in St. Louis as a McDonnell International Academy Scholar, along with a bachelor’s degree in Industrial Engineering from Middle East Technical University. Before moving back to Turkey for Kodluyoruz, she worked for Malala Fund and World Bank in Washington, D.C. to support girls’ education and to provide strategic directions to governments on how to adapt education systems to the third industrial revolution. She also worked as a strategic planning and business development consultant for 3 years in Turkey.  

Cherrie Atilano, Founder and CEO of AGREA, and Youth Advisory Group (YAG) board member, led an engaging webinar on how young people employed in the agriculture sector can build a sustainable global food system post COVID-19. Cherrie started teaching farmers at the age of 12, has 22 years of vast experience in Sustainable Food Systems, and is the recipient of numerous global awards.

Before the pandemic, AGREA provided training in agricultural entrepreneurship. Her organization has successfully utilized young people and young farmers in the Philippines during COVID-19. AGREA has helped over 20,182 Filipino small-farmer holders reach over 70,527 Filipino families with nearly 177,000 kilos of fruit and vegetables. Additionally, AGREA has donated to 10 kitchens feeding front-liners and delivered 154 GrowKits for urban agriculture.

She is a High-Level Ambassador of the United Nations Scaling Up Nutrition, she is a part of the 2020 class World Economic Forum’s foundation for remarkable leaders under 40, and a Board Member of the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) based in Geneva, Switzerland and United People Global based in Zurich Switzerland. She was also newly appointed as the Philippine Ambassadress on Food Security.  

The orange economy contributes to creating approximately 30 million jobs in the world. During the COVID-19 crisis, arts and creative activities have helped support people in isolation and confinement. This new S4YE Thematic Note brings in several concrete examples of projects that have used the creative sectors to support job creation. The Note discusses five main types of interventions like:

• nurturing human capital, 
• providing access to finance, 
• expanding access to markets, 
• building networks and clusters, and 
• harnessing digital technology to support the sector. 

This webinar highlighted Accenture's experience in pivoting to a virtual delivery of their Skills to Succeed Internship program in the wake of COVID-19. In addition to managing the outreach and recruitment of interns, and the logistics of sending the equipment , speakers also talked about how suitable teams, mentors and projects were identified and how staff were trained to ensure that they were adequately prepared to mentor incoming interns. Speakers identified specific challenges around internet connectivity, broken laptops, and communication disruptions, and ways in which they were able to address them. You can find full access to Accenture's UK Movement to Work Virtual Placement Toolkit here.

This Note builds on research covering the three countries with the highest concentration of Syrian refugees displaced since 2011: Turkey, Jordan, and Lebanon. It is intended to inform policymakers and practitioners on the barriers that Syrian refugees, especially women, face in securing work to earn a livelihood. This Note highlights initiatives designed to address those barriers, but does not enumerate all of them. While not specifically addressing internally-displaced persons (IDPs) within Syria, this Note could serve as a blueprint for examining and addressing many of the same barriers women face in Syria.

As organizations around the world navigate the transition to remote work, constraints of internet connectivity make this transition even more challenging. Private sector companies globally are stepping up to offer technology products and tools that can make this transition easier. This S4YE webinar featured Juan Cuadros from SAP and Apurva Chandra from Microsoft who both spoke about their organizations e-learning solutions and demonstrated use cases from developing countries to highlight how organizations can use e-learning platforms, even in low-connectivity environments, to meet community needs during COVID-19 times. SAP Litmos is a cloud-based solution that unifies virtual, classroom, mobile, and social learning, and empowers training departments, service leaders, HR teams to collaborate, author, globally distribute, and track web-based training courses, as well as schedule and track instructor-led courses. Learn more here. Microsoft Community Training is an azure powered platform that supports personalized learning for a large-scale mobile-based community. It is affordable, easy to manage and provides robust security and privacy protection through an easy-to-use UI or via REST APIs. Learn more here.

This Jobs Solutions Note identifies practical solutions for development practitioners to proactively integrate gender inclusion in digital jobs programs. Based on curated knowledge and evidence for a specific topic and relevant to jobs, the Jobs Solutions Notes are not intended to be exhaustive; they provide key lessons, solutions and approaches synthesized from the experiences of the World Bank Group and partners. This Note draws from S4YE’s 2018 annual report, Digital Jobs for Youth: Young Women in the Digital Economy, highlighting new and emerging strategies to designing gender-inclusive digital jobs interventions for youth. The Note employs a nuanced definition of “digital jobs” to enable practitioners and policy makers to develop a range of interventions tailored to specific contexts and target groups, to improve young women’s employment outcomes from digital jobs programs.

This S4YE webinar featured Isabelle Salcher from New York University and Karla Yoder from Global Communities. The seminar focused on the the effects of a nationwide, government-sponsored apprenticeship program in Ghana and the YIEDIE project which implemented an apprenticeship that provided over 14,000 youth with technical skills. You can find access to the National Apprenticeship Program Ghana Experimental Evidence presentation slides here and the YIEDIE Ghana apprenticeship model Global Communities presentation here.

This S4YE webinar featured Georges Houngbonon from IFC and Todd Cotts from Intelsat. The session focused on how enabling broadband infrastructure in rural and hard-to-reach regions can boost youth employment opportunities. Broadband is integral to social and economic activity globally, however access to internet connectivity remains a significant challenge in many countries.

Innovative private sector-led solutions can enable broadband connectivity in remote regions, and this can lead to more employment opportunities. Broadband connectivity can enhance entrepreneurship and self-employment opportunities by creating new markets (e.g. electronic devices sales and repairing, distribution of ancillary services like cybercafes); and lowering the costs of setting up and running traditional businesses.

The lack of electricity has been a key barrier to broadband access in rural areas. However, today telecom companies and network operators are breaking market barriers to jointly provide energy efficient solutions to access power and broadband connectivity at the same time – which in turn can lead to more micro-businesses that can further create several job opportunities in the community - like setting up and running solar powered-phone charging kiosks, maintenance of solar home systems etc.

You can find video access to this webinar here.

This S4YE webinar featured Skilllab and JobKred. The session touched upon several perspectives like, use of AI across the workforce transformation value chain to recommend career, training, and jobs;   using these platforms to integrate refugees into local labor markets better;   translating personal and voluntary ‘’experiences” into skill profiles that could be used for signaling to employers.

In addition to sharing many use cases, the speakers emphasized key design elements of their respective platforms so that these tools do not reinforce labor market occupational and gender biases and maintain data privacy while working with developing country governments. The webinar also delved into the common challenges faced in implementation such as lack of adequate data, local jobs and the need for a strong local partner to make these solutions truly effective.

The webinar, featuring speakers from the Global Apprenticeship Network (GAN), TransZed Apprenticeships, The Adecco Group, Zurich Insurance Group and Intel delved into the business case for implementing Work-Based Learning programs and highlighted different models across industries and sectors that can lead to win-win outcomes for both the private sector and the youth. Using examples from their own experience, speakers highlighted key design elements in their WBL programs. They talked about the need for work contracts for apprentices in formal labor markets; the importance of certification to ensure portability of skills; and the value in partnering with local universities to design demand-driven ‘Dual Education’ programs. The webinar also underscored the need for consortiums in building industry alliances and bringing SMEs in each sector together to promote more institutionalized WBL programs among the private sector.

This webinar is part of the 'S4YE- Insights from the Private Sector' webinar series- an ongoing web series that facilitates dialogue between youth employment practitioners and private sector companies around the world. 

In this Knowledge Brief, we examine 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. We specifically highlight 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 to access financial resources, develop capacity, and increase sales.

The MENA e-commerce Project is part of the World Bank Group’s Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative (We-Fi), a joint global initiative of the World Bank and International Finance Corporation that tests innovations and scales up successful pilots under three thematic pillars—strengthening entrepreneurial ecosystems, expanding financial services, and improving market access—and includes research, investment, advice, partnerships and peer-learning efforts. The program aims to reach 43,000 women entrepreneurs and catalyze 40,000 loans to WSMEs.

This Brief is part of the Solutions for Youth Employment (S4YE) Knowledge Brief series focusing on the design and implementation of youth employment programs. This Brief builds on S4YE’s 2018 annual report, Digital Jobs for Youth: Young Women in the Digital Economy, which highlights new and emerging strategies for practitioners designing digital jobs interventions for youth.

In this Knowledge Brief, we examine how the World Bank’s ‘Gaza Emergency Cash for Work and Self-Employment Support’ project is supporting NGOs that are connecting unemployed youth with online work opportunities. The project will help to fund skills training and digital job support to 750 youth (including 375 young women). We specifically highlight challenges facing young women in the West Bank and Gaza – who experience high rates of unemployment – and the strategies used to encourage their program participation and empower them to engage in e-work.

This Brief is part of the Solutions for Youth Employment (S4YE) Knowledge Brief series focusing on the design and implementation of youth employment programs. This Brief builds on S4YE’s 2018 annual report, Digital Jobs for Youth: Young Women in the Digital Economy, which highlights new and emerging strategies for practitioners designing digital jobs interventions for youth.

In this Knowledge Brief, we examine strategies the World Bank’s ‘Digital Jobs in Nigeria’ pilot project team adopted to help vulnerable youth in conflict-affected areas to leverage employment opportunities in the digital economy. The pilot provides training for unemployed and under-employed youth in Kaduna State to pursue digital jobs, including online freelancing and digital entrepreneurship. We specifically highlight the team’s responses to several challenges, including: managing security threats; navigating limited ICT infrastructure; building a local tech ecosystem; adapting to restrictive sociocultural norms; and integrating local knowledge.

This Brief is part of the Solutions for Youth Employment (S4YE) Knowledge Brief series focusing on the design and implementation of youth employment programs. This Brief builds on S4YE’s 2018 annual report, Digital Jobs for Youth: Young Women in the Digital Economy, which highlights new and emerging strategies for practitioners designing digital jobs interventions for youth.

This factbook is designed to aide practitioners and highlights interesting design elements from the 44 youth employment programs that make up our external community of practice, the Impact Portfolio. Projects from leading organizations such as Harambee, Samasource, Generation, Save the Children, Aga Khan Development Network, Knack, and many more are part of this community. These projects represent a spectrum of themes which include Digital Jobs and Skills, Private Sector Involvement, Business Incubation and Acceleration, Impact Sourcing, Digital Platforms, Agriculture, Youth with Disabilities, Woman and Girls, as well as Refugees.

The webinar, featuring speakers from Nestle’ and IFC delved into two key aspects of agri-prenuership  - 1) how to attract youth into the agricultural value chain and 2) how to sustain them. The webinar highlighted the need to connect agri-prenuers across the agricultural value chain, and the role of the private sector in doing so. Using a wide range of examples, the speakers talked about interesting private sector led solutions like innovative blended financing for smallholder farmers, guaranteed access to markets through supply chain models, and institutionalized training and technical assistance, that could enable future farmers to find viable employment opportunities in the agri-space.

This webinar is part of the ‘S4YE – Insights from the Private Sector’ webinar series - an ongoing web series that facilitates dialogue between youth employment practitioners and private sector companies around the world. 

The webinar, featuring speakers from Microsoft, iMerit and IFC, highlighted how AI and disruptive technologies have a complex relationship with job creation. While many routine tasks are being automated, the speakers highlighted several innovative ways in which disruptive technologies are making jobs accessible to very low income disadvantaged youth (through an interesting impact sourcing model); or helping firms increase productivity or creating innovative solutions to constraints faced by young entrepreneurs ( like access to credit or payments through fintech solutions;  or connection to markets through ecommerce platforms; or access to real time weather information to small holder farmers.)

This webinar is part of the ‘S4YE – Insights from the Private Sector’ webinar series - an ongoing web series that facilitates dialogue between youth employment practitioners and private sector companies around the world. 

On November 13 and 14, 2019 S4YE in collaboration with the World Bank’s Social Protection and Jobs team in Ethiopia held its first Regional Youth Employment Forum 'Learning from Innovations in Youth Employment' in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. This inaugural event brought together S4YE’s network of core partners for the first time in-person in the Africa region to:

• Convene the newly expanded S4YE Impact Portfolio in Africa to share exciting innovations in the field of youth employment and discuss practical design ideas on specific technical topics and learn from experts, and

• Use insights from these technical discussions as input for the design of the planned Ethiopia Urban Safety Net and Jobs Project.

More than 170 participants of the Forum included World Bank Group teams leading youth employment operations globally and in Ethiopia, Nigeria, Lebanon, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Kenya; Senior Government representatives from Ethiopia; Senior executives from Private Sector firms which are part of the S4YE network; Members of S4YE’s Impact Portfolio, a community of innovative youth employment projects and Technical experts and other stakeholders. Click here to learn more about the Forum as it happened, and check this page to download the presentations, photos and videos!  

Solutions for Youth Employment (S4YE) has launched two new virtual tools to help practitioners leading youth employment operations: S4YE Knowledge Repository and the S4YE Project Portal. S4YE’s Knowledge Repository is a global inventory of over 200 practical toolkits, guidance notes, and other resources curated to help youth employment practitioners design, implement, and scale programs. The S4YE Project Portal provides information on over 100 youth employment operations being implemented by the World Bank, as well as all 44 youth employment projects within S4YE’s Impact Portfolio community of practice. Click here to read the blog about these resources

Unemployment is hitting young people the hardest. The ILO estimates that youth unemployment rates are 300 percent higher than unemployment rates for adults over 25 years old. But young people are not standing by and waiting for opportunities to come their way. Many of them are actively engaged in tackling the challenge. Listen to the interview of three youth leaders from the Solutions for Youth Employment Youth Advisory Group who are tackling youth unemployment challenges in their own countries.

Young social entrepreneurs can play a vital role in reducing youth unemployment by creating opportunities for those around them. However, one common challenge that social ventures face is raising funds that would make their businesses or initiatives sustainable. Every new or growing social venture might need to map relevant donors and come up with effective strategies for fundraising. Fundraising can take many shapes from submitting a grant proposal to crowdfunding. The first in the Youth Advisory Group webinar series focuses on grant writing. 

Grant Writing webinar provides expert opinion on successful grant applications. S4YE partners will share information about what is effective in writing grant proposals, demonstrating how young entrepreneurs could improve their grant writing skills to make their ventures more sustainable. Please download the presentation to view the presentations. 

Young entrepreneurs are vital to global economic development. But with millions of unemployed young people around the world, their potential is going unrealized. Mentoring is often an essential part of the support package that organizations provide to entrepreneurs and is a vital ingredient in their success. Building and running a successful mentoring program is challenging, and for mentoring to be effective a robust approach to the application, the design is essential. S4YE convened a workshop for S4YE partners to share information about their successful mentorship programs for young entrepreneurs. Please click download to view their presentations. 

One of the pillars of S4YE’s work to promote bottom-up understanding of live and ongoing innovations in the field is its community of practice, the “Impact Portfolio” (IP). Launched in January 2017, the IP is currently made up of 19 high-potential and innovative youth employment projects. Building on the success of this first phase, and keeping up with the need for agile innovations in the rapidly changing world of work, the IP community would like to expand its network. The objective of this expansion is to identify and reach out to youth employment projects that are developing cutting edge innovations to join this learning community. This flyer details the Impact Portfolio and the expansion process. 

S4YE has identified private sector engagement as a cross-cutting theme for all its activities. S4YE actions have included novel research on private sectors’ role in skills training, and engagement of private enterprises in the development of innovative operations to tackle youth employment. The private sector has also played a key role in S4YE’s governance with a significant voice on S4YE’s Board. To further advance the understanding and effectiveness of private sector engagement, S4YE is now developing a Private Sector Advisory Council (PSAC) that will consist of senior level representatives from a select group of companies. This flyer details the strategic vision of S4YE PSAC, including a list of potential future activities. 

This flyer details the strategic vision of S4YE, including a breakdown of its past accomplishments and future activities.

This Note is a stocktake summarizing evidence on “what works” in youth employment programs on both the supply and demand side. Employment outcomes refer both to direct and indirect job creation, including through firm start-up, as well as improvements in the quality of jobs as manifested in higher earnings as self-employment or increases in household income. This paper is based on an extensive desk literature review and analyzes the major meta-analysis and literature reviews on both the labor demand side and labor supply side.

This guide aims to provide general guidance to project managers and project teams on the design and implementation of integrated, cross-sectoral youth employment programs. Traditionally, youth employment programs have focused primarily on supply-side interventions—that is, those dealing with individual constraints to accessing or moving between jobs. Many of these programs have had limited labor market impacts. On the other hand, most interventions on the demand side, which focus on providing support to firms, do not specifically target job creation—and fewer still specifically target youth. Governments and development institutions too often implement activities and programs that target either the supply side or the demand side of the labor market without coordination or an explicit intent to create linkages that will maximize the impact of their interventions and improve job opportunities for youth. 

Solutions for Youth Employment (S4YE) partnered with a diverse group of student researchers from the Yale University Jackson Institute for Global Affairs for research on three countries in which the Bank is currently designing youth employment operations - Jordan, Liberia and South Africa. Over the course of four months, the students worked with the Task Team Leaders in the Social Protection and Jobs Group, conducted stocktake and gap analysis and compiled their findings in a report “Meeting the Challenge of Youth Unemployment: Analysis and Lessons from Jordan, Liberia, and South Africa”. They interviewed representatives from select programs, country/topic experts and local youth themselves, cataloguing a total of 108 interventions.

S4YE's 2018 Annual Report, Digital Jobs: Young Women in the Digital Economy, provides operational recommendations for the design and implementation of gender-inclusive digital jobs interventions for youth. Co-authored by S4YE coalition members including The Rockefeller Foundation, Plan International, RAND Corporation, and the World Bank Group, the report develops a new typology of digital jobs, and draws insights from 19 case studies based on past and ongoing employment programs implemented and/or supported by S4YE coalition members that connected youth with digital jobs opportunities.  

This Knowledge Brief aims to serve as basic guidance on developing and designing a social entrepreneurship program to combat youth employment challenges. This is the second in a series of two Solutions for Youth Employment (S4YE) Knowledge Briefs that study the role of social enterprises in youth employment through two main dimensions (1) as youth employment programs and (2) in creating entrepreneurs that launch social enterprises. 

S4YE's 2018 Annual Report, Digital Jobs: Young Women in the Digital Economy, provides operational recommendations for the design and implementation of gender-inclusive digital jobs interventions for youth. Co-authored by S4YE coalition members including The Rockefeller Foundation, Plan International, RAND Corporation, and the World Bank Group, the report develops a new typology of digital jobs, and draws insights from 19 case studies based on past and ongoing employment programs implemented and/or supported by S4YE coalition members that connected youth with digital jobs opportunities.  

 In this Knowledge Brief we discuss ways in which youth employment programs can apply the social enterprise approach in their operations. It outlines where social enterprises fit in the landscape of youth employment, characteristics that make the model suitable, the types of social enterprises that can function as youth employment programs, and an example of the social enterprise approach in action from Digital Divide Data’s (DDD) impact sourcing work in Cambodia, Laos, and Kenya. This Brief is part of the S4YE Knowledge Brief series, which highlights the nuts and bolts of youth employment programs. 

In this Knowledge Brief1 we discuss ways in which youth employment programs can make strategic use of their data. This Brief is part of the Solutions for Youth Employment (S4YE) Knowledge Brief series, which highlights the nuts and bolts of youth employment programs.

Presentation for S4YE IP Virtual Workshop on Gender in Youth Employment (Ana Maria Martinez, Laboratoria)

Presentation from S4YE IP Virtual Workshop on Gender in Youth Employment. (Drew Gardiner, ILO)

Presentation from S4YE IP Virtual Workshop on Gender in Youth Employment. (Delores McLaughlin, Plan International)

This brief highlights the challenge transport costs (TCs) present towards youth getting a job and some potential solutions to overcome it. We also share an in-depth example of a solution at work with Harambee's experience in South Africa. 

In 2017, S4YE partnered with Restless Development to consult young people and S4YE partners on how youth could and should be involved in the Coalition’s operations. As a result, Restless Development produced this recommendations report.

This presentation from the second IP Virtual Workshop covers Silatech's methods for creating and using youth beneficiary data to improve job matching capacity, currently being applied in the Tounes Ta3mal project initiated b Silatech and Microsoft.

This presentation from the second IP Virtual Workshop covers Save the Children's experience in developing and integrating digital solutions into existing youth employment projects.

Presentation from the event “Advancing the Field: How Private Sector is Driving Innovation to Address Youth Employment” (Ritu Sharma, Regional Director, Eurasia and Director, Global Center for Gender & Youth, International Youth Foundation)

Presentation from the event “Advancing the Field: How Private Sector is Driving Innovation to Address Youth Employment” (David Robalino, Manager, Jobs, World Bank)

Presentation from the event “Advancing the Field: How Private Sector is Driving Innovation to Address Youth Employment” (Nick Martin, CEO, TechChange)

Presentation from the event “Advancing the Field: How Private Sector is Driving Innovation to Address Youth Employment” (Yvonne Thomas, Director, Global Programs, Microsoft Philanthropies)

Presentation from the event “Advancing the Field: How Private Sector is Driving Innovation to Address Youth Employment” (Nicole Isaac, Head of U.S. Public Policy, LinkedIn)

Presentation from the event “Advancing the Field: How Private Sector is Driving Innovation to Address Youth Employment” (Sean Burke, Strategy and Innovation Lead, Global Corporate Citizenship, Accenture)

This presentation from the first IP Virtual Workshop highlights key aspects of the World Bank’s Jobs M&E toolkit, providing concrete and consistent definitions for indicators on key outcomes related to job access, job creation, and job quality.

This presentation from the first IP Virtual Workshop explains Generation's Cost per Employed Day metric, which combines cost per beneficiary, employment rates, and retention rate at the job and shifts attention to tracking costs in relation to outcomes rather than outputs.

The Impact Portfolio (IP) consists of 19 youth employment projects spanning 15 countries across the globe. S4YE completed 25+ one-on-one consultation calls across the projects to identify their innovative approaches and context-specific technological solutions. This report has two main objectives: The first is to provide youth employment practitioners insights into important aspects of the operations, design, and innovations of the 19 projects in the IP. The second is to support the development of this group of 19 projects as a live learning community and catalyst of innovation in the global youth employment space.

S4YE has collaborated with LinkedIn to use LinkedIn’s unique data base to address the question: what is the alignment, or mismatch, between the skills employers are demanding and those among the young talent supply? This unique piece of research sheds light on labor market trends for entry-level talent in emerging economies, assesses mismatch in how skills are signaled, and shares recommendations for skills training providers, employers, and youth. It focuses on four middle-income countries (Brazil, India, Indonesia and South Africa) and analyzes 390,000 entry-level postings and 6.4 million LinkedIn profiles of youth ages 21-29 to better understand top industries of employment, as well as recruitment and skills trends.

S4YE has collaborated with LinkedIn to use LinkedIn’s unique data base to address the question: what is the alignment, or mismatch, between the skills employers are demanding and those among the young talent supply? This unique piece of research sheds light on labor market trends for entry-level talent in emerging economies, assesses mismatch in how skills are signaled, and shares recommendations for skills training providers, employers, and youth. It focuses on four middle-income countries (Brazil, India, Indonesia and South Africa) and analyzes 390,000 entry-level postings and 6.4 million LinkedIn profiles of youth ages 21-29 to better understand top industries of employment, as well as recruitment and skills trends.

This brief will inform, inspire, and guide employment service providers, government, businesses, and civil society agencies seeking to strengthen youth employment outcomes through impactful employment services to better design and coordinate their activities.

Approaches that ignite the private sector and generate jobs that harness the productive capacity of young people are increasingly essential. Linkage-oriented strategies can open up supply and value chains and stimulate opportunities for youth enterprise and young workers. This brief will inspire and guide corporations, linkage service providers, and donors seeking to promote youth employment through designing or strengthening the activities of impactful linkage programs.

This flyer details the strategic vision of S4YE, including a breakdown of its past accomplishments and future activities.

An overview of partnership and contribution options to get engaged with S4YE’s mission.

This report examines the opportunities and challenges surrounding public-private partnerships (PPPs) in the youth employment sector. It considers a variety of private sector participation models, existing programs, public policy implications, and recommendations for program design. The report was published in collaboration between S4YE and RAND Corporation.

A condensed version of the full S4YE Baseline report. This inaugural report explores the state of youth employment through a three-part baseline; (1) context, (2) evidence & knowledge, and (3) inclusion.

Solutions for Youth Employment was launched in October 2014 as a multi-stakeholder coalition to mobilize efforts to significantly increase the number of young people engaged in productive work by the year 2030. This inaugural report explores the state of youth employment through a three-part baseline; (1) context, (2) evidence & knowledge, and (3) inclusion.

This is the Solutions for Youth Employment (S4YE) five-year strategic plan for 2015-2020, outlining key areas of work and approaches that the coalition will adopt over this period. *PLEASE NOTE: This document is being updated. You can find the most recent S4YE strategic priorities here