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Connect and share knowledge, experiences, and lessons learned. Exchange the latest resources, jobs, and funding opportunities. Impact the world’s 1.8 billion young people.

Technical Areas

Workforce Development

Building the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that youth need to obtain and participate in productive work in partnership with the private sector, community organizations, and educational institutions. read more

Financial Services

Working with financial institutions, supporting organizations, and regulators to design and deliver financial services and education that respond to the savings, borrowing, and risk mitigation needs of young clients. read more

Enterprise Development

Supporting entrepreneurs to start and run profitable businesses through training, technical assistance, and inclusive market development activities read more

Gender

Addressing the role that gender plays in shaping economic opportunities, especially for adolescent girls and young women. read more

Evaluation & Assessment

Improving the effectiveness, sustainability, and scale of programs by sharing data on what works and what doesn’t, and methodologies for monitoring, evaluation and impact assessment. read more

Highlights

FEATURED RESOURCE

This "Banking on Youth" publication is a guide for deposit-taking institutions in any stage of youth savings program development––from those simply exploring the possibility of introducing youth savings, to those already offering youth products but looking for new ideas and strategies to improve performance. read more

YEO Video

Watch Markus Goldstein, Senior Economist at the World Bank, speak about an adolescent girls' empowerment project in Uganda implemented by BRAC and the World Bank. The project focuses on providing four key elements: a safe social space for girls, life skills training, vocational training, and access to microfinance. read more

Featured Resource

Youth livelihood programs must engage and support youth. The challenge is to determine how to encourage these youth and help them acquire the relevant competencies and resources necessary to enhance their livelihoods, and ultimately the livelihoods of others within their communities. Read this guide to help understand how to design effective youth livelihood strategies. read more

YEO Blog

Are you interested in what happened during the CGAP-Silatech Youth MENA Financial Inclusion Workshop in Morocco this March? Check out this blog for an overview of the reasons for hosting the conference, the keynote address and speaker along with information from each of the sessions held. read more

News

Global Employment Trends for Youth 2013

By International Labour Organization, May 8, 2013

The  weakening  of  the  global  recovery  in  2012  and  2013  has  further  aggravated  the youth jobs crisis and  the queues  for available jobs have become longer and longer  for some unfortunate young jobseekers. So long, in  fact,  that many youth are giving up on the job search. The prolonged jobs crisis also forces the current generation of youth to be less selective about the type of job they are prepared to accept, a tendency that was already  evident  before  the  crisis.

Resource Type: 
Report

Entrepreneurship training and self-employment among university graduates: Evidence from a randomized trial in Tunisia

By Premand, Patrick; Brodmann, Stefanie; Almedia, Rita; Grun, Rebekka and Mahdi Barouni from World Bank, 2012

In economies characterized by low labor demand and high rates of youth unemployment such as the Middle East and North Africa, entrepreneurship training delivered in school has the potential to enable youth to create their own jobs. This paper presents experimental evidence on a new entrepreneurship track that provides business training and personalized coaching to university students in Tunisia. Undergraduates in the final year of licence appliquée were given the opportunity to graduate with a business plan instead of following the standard curriculum. We rely on randomized assignment of the entrepreneurship track among applicants and identify impacts on labor market outcomes one year after graduation. We find that the entrepreneurship track was effective in increasing self-employment, but that the effects are small in absolute terms. In addition, the employment rate among beneficiaries remains unchanged, pointing to a substitution from wage employment to self-employment.

Resource Type: 
Case Study

Measuring Success of Youth Livelihood Interventions: A Guide to Monitoring and Evaluation

By Hempel, Kevin and Nathan Fiala from Global Partnership for Youth Employment, 2012

This Guide helps decide what type of evaluation is appropriate given the characteristics and context of an intervention and provides the basic set of concepts and tools to carry out impact evaluations.

Resource Type: 
Toolkit

Implementing a Trauma Informed Approach for Youth Across Service Sectors

Event host(s)/organization(s): 
Interagency Working Group on Youth Programs
Event Date: 
May 21, 2013 (02:00am to 03:30am)

Developing an understanding of how trauma affects the lives of youth, and how service providers can infuse this understanding into their work with young people from various populations, can make an important difference in outcomes for youth.

Education and Youth Protection Coordinator

By IRC, May 10, 2013 10:42am
Organization: 
IRC
Country: 
Côte d'Ivoire
Region: 
Sub-Saharan Africa
Closing date: 
Jun 10, 2013

A New Middle East: Investing Where it Matters Most

By Elissa McCarter from Global Communities (CHF), 2012

How do we redefine investment in the Middle East? Political and and social changes in MENA offer a multitude of opportunities to address economic disparity and lack of opportunity, but those change must begin with investing in youth, to grow and create jobs for future generations. Moreover, creating enabling political, legal, and business environments will better address youth needs and increase financing. Following these suggestions, argues CHF, will create more opportunities for the entire populatio

Resource Type: 
Paper

Age Ain't Nothing But a Number

By Center for Financial Inclusion, May 10, 2013

How important are age group definitions? A rose by any other name? This blog at the Center for Financial Inclusion discusses the implications of how we define age groups. Emphasis should be made on developing services that reflect realities of your stakeholders, rather than definitions surrounding generalized life cycle transitions. 

IFC Brown Bag: Creating Economic Opportunities for Youth

Event host(s)/organization(s): 
International Finance Corporation (IFC) and Making Cents International
Event Date: 
May 9, 2013 (12:30pm to 02:00pm)

Why participate?

  • Explore Making Cents and how it can contribute to IFC’s strategies for addressing employment and entrepreneurship.
  • Discuss principles for integrating youth into economic growth programming and financial inclusion.
  • Learn how Making Cents is approaching the issue of rural youth unemployment in MENA.

Guest Speakers

Roadmap to Inclusion: Insights Into Youth Financial Capability

By Center for Financial Inclusion, Apr 30, 2013

Financial Inclusion 2020 (FI2020) at the CFI is building a movement that mobilizes stakeholders around the globe to achieve financial inclusion by the year 2020. As a part of this global campaign, we are focusing on client segments that have specific needs, youth among them.  FI2020’s working group on Financial Capability, one of five expert working groups creating a Roadmap to Financial Inclusion, shares insights into the group’s findings on youth and financial services.

Employment Generation in Rural Africa: Mid-term Results from an Experimental Evaluation of the Youth Opportunities Program in Northern Uganda

By Blattman, Christopher; Fiala, Nathan; and Sebastian Martinez from Innovations for Poverty Action, Dec, 2011

Can cash transfers promote employment and reduce poverty in rural Africa? Will lower youth unemployment and poverty reduce the risk of social instability? This assessment experimentally evaluates one of Uganda’s largest development programs, which provided thousands of young people nearly unconditional, unsupervised cash transfers to pay for vocational training, tools, and business start-up costs. Mid-term results after two years suggest four main findings. First, despite a lack of central monitoring and accountability, most youth invest the transfer in vocational skills and tools.

Resource Type: 
Paper
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