World Bank Group

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

This report reviews the literature, identifies project examples, and derives lessons for the design and implementation of demand-driven training (DDT) and results-based financing (RBF). A summary of the existing literature on international experiences with DDT and RBF, including good practices, is presented here. This review aims to identify the most effective ways to deliver these programs and provide general lessons on their design and implementation.

Young people are particularly disadvantaged in Kosovo’s labor market, facing high unemployment and precarious working conditions. In response, promoting youth employment has become a policy priority for the Government of Kosovo. Supporting young people’s employment prospects must consider that young people are different than adults. First, they face age-specific barriers in the labor market, such as lack of work experience and limited professional networks.

The blog highlights the World Bank's strategy aims at creating economic opportunities for MENA’s youth by opening-up business environments for young entrepreneurs to compete in free and fair markets for the provision of goods and services.
 

Young women in Africa are less likely to be employed than young men, as a result of gaps in access to resources such as skills, time, and capital, and due to underlying social norms. Adolescence is a particularly critical time to intervene, as teenage pregnancy or dropping out of school can have severe impacts on future employment and earnings with significant consequences on their lives. At the macroeconomic level, investing in adolescent girls is also crucial for Sub-Saharan Africa`s demographic dividend.

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

IFC has developed this toolkit that provides practical, detailed tools to help companies assess and address equality and inclusion obstacles in the workplace, across the supply chain, and in community engagement and investment. It includes easy-to-use techniques and tools to transform a broad gender strategy into a supportive working reality for women and men.

This report will be of interest to government officials, potential investors, producers, and the donor agencies working on agricultural entrepreneurship in Lesotho where the government is trying to attract investment in primary agriculture and agro-processing.

This report takes stock of the market for impact investing and examines the conditions that would allow the market to grow and realize its potential. Although still small, the market is attracting considerable interest, and it has the potential to increase in scale, and thereby contribute to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Paris climate goals.

This report summarizes emerging evidence on the formation of cognitive, behavioral and technical skills. What does this mean for Vietnam’s education and training system? This report proposes a holistic skills strategy for Vietnam which looks at today’s workforce as much as the future workforce.