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Youth – feeding the future. Addressing the challenges faced by rural youth aged 15 to 17 in preparing for and accessing decent work.

At Save the Children we work with adolescents and youth in both urban and rural contexts to support them in their transition to work and break the intergenerational cycle of poverty. We have a lot of programming and policies on food security and livelihoods in the rural context and we don’t always have programming specifically targeted to youth. Yet the 15-17 age group is definitely one that deserves specific attention as it represents a time period when more definitive decisions are made around education, work, fertility and marriage (assuming they haven’t already started).

SC’s experience in adolescent and youth economic empowerment has shown that working with adolescents who have suffered deprivations relating to poverty should be combined with the fostering of ‘agency’. Agency will be promoted through mutually reinforcing building blocks, such as the development of key life and employability skills and voice and participation, as well as ‘good practice principles’. This will cover ways of working, such as the use of participatory methods and active learning – engaging adolescents and youth in the design of programmes and their measures of success.

SC has also found that partnerships are essential for ensuring the relevance and sustaining the impact of these programmes. Partnerships may include local NGOs, government, small and medium local businesses, parents and communities, as well as in many cases, with visionary corporate partners and industry. Such partnerships are important for building local market, normative and social systems which provide hands-on and market relevant learning opportunities for adolescents and youth and are supportive of their rights. For example, working with local employers to ensure that skills training opportunities are accessible to adolescents and youth from deprived backgrounds and that work places are safe for them. It is also important to work with training providers and employers to ensure that services and jobs are equally accessible to boys and girls, young men and women, as well as to adolescents and youth living with disabilities to the highest extent possible.

In terms of programming, policy and advocacy we focus on a few key building blocks for this age group. I will mention a few.

Transferable life skills. This relates to developing adolescent and youth life or non-cognitive skills relevant for the multiple transitions adolescents and youth go through at this stage in life.[1] These are skills that can be taught in the context of a transition to work but are ‘transferable’ to all areas of life. A recent study by Child Trends (2015) identified five life skills as key for youth workforce success: higher-order thinking; communication; self-control; positive self-concept; and social skills.[2] Programmes may focus on additional or alternative skills depending on the context and needs of the specific population, as the development of life skills also play a role in the way adolescents and youth manage other aspects of their lives. Examples of this can include a girl’s refusal to have sex with a man, the negotiation for a plot of land to grow healthy foods, or more generally to promote resilience and facilitate adolescent’s and youth’s ability to claim their rights.[3] Furthermore, these skills can lead to enhanced health results, improved parenting and social cohesion.[4]  The application of these skill sets, in particular positive decision-making, negotiation and communication skills can lead to the practice of gender equality in contexts where girls are often seeking to improve household dynamics in an appropriate way. Life skills cut across all building blocks and represent a foundation for mitigating livelihood barriers. Moreover, improved life skills will help youth succeed in other building blocks, e.g. on the job training, voice and participation. Learning and practicing life skills can have beneficial impacts on aspects beyond economic empowerment. Evidence from the Population Council research indicates that exercising these skills through building financial capability can result in improved health outcomes.[5]

Financial Capability. Another key building block looks at the combination of financial literacy and access to savings tools, which has been successful in enabling young people to build up financial assets,[6] which in turn have been associated with improved academic performance, health, future orientation and financial capability.[7]  This building block should be set in place as early as possible. By starting earlier, there is higher financial asset growth potential and the ability to build skills and habits such as budgeting, planning expenses, foregoing impulse purchases, managing cash flow and setting financial goals. Encompassed in this building block are also loans that can be accessed to improve a livelihoods opportunity for older adolescents and young people.

Market-relevant technical skills. This building block points to technical training of adolescents and youth in market relevant skills, including vocational and entrepreneurship training with links to opportunities to practice and internalise these skills. The range of interventions could include: technical skills training through training programmes or existing technical vocational education and training (TVET) centres; apprenticeship programmes in cooperation with small or medium local businesses or large corporates; training through business development hubs. The definition of what constitutes “market-relevant” skills should be based on market assessments (as discussed in the first good-practice principle below) and the interests and aspiration of adolescents themselves (linked to the youth led principle below). Furthermore SC programmes should aim at going beyond traditional vocations.

Services and market opportunities. This building block focuses on facilitating access to youth friendly employment, business and financial services. It is about working with adolescents and youth to identify internship opportunities that help to position themselves, not only for entry to the employment market, but also for participating in viable value chains or trade sectors as entrepreneurs. Skills to Succeed facilitates access to job fairs and offers opportunities for adolescents and youth to have practical experiences working in the private sector.

Guidance and mentorship. This building block includes career counselling to enable adolescents and youth to make informed choices on which paths to take (employment, entrepreneurship, more schooling, etc.) at the beginning, during and after the end of the training part of any programme. Coaching, mentoring and ongoing/follow up support is available to youth as they start a business or engage in employment opportunities, as well as during the search for a job. Follow-up services include options such as alumni groups or career counselling services that also facilitate tracking status on livelihoods activities after the programme ends.  Mentoring is also recommended as it fosters network development for adolescents and youth, as well as positive role modelling and the care of a supportive adult.

Voice and economic participation. This building block includes the fostering of youth engagement and advocacy for decent livelihoods. If properly engaged and supported, adolescents and youth will be able to have a voice in decision-making within their family, community and society at large. They will influence perceptions on youth, find participation spaces and improve intergenerational relations and dialogue. Promotion of youth-led approaches foster agency and empower youth to make their own labour market assessments, internalise data, understand the system, know their rights and how to apply them, know who their duty bearers are and cultivate their ability to act on an economic opportunity. Programmes should build the skills of adolescents and youth to analyse the situation in their work environment and assert their rights.

Enabling environment. Adolescent and youth’s successful transition to decent work is not dependent on their individual skills alone, but to a large extent is dependent on the environment in which adolescents and youth operate. This environment includes formal (e.g. policies and laws) and informal rules (e.g. social norms and expectations), effective training and market systems as well as effective social networks. This includes advocacy for holding duty bearers accountable to design and implement effective, inclusive and safe skills transfer programmes. It also includes capacity building for and with duty bearers such that they are enabled to fulfill their duties. Activities to promote an enabling environment furthermore include: advocacy and capacity building of local stakeholders from the public and private sector to provide decent learning and working environments; working with parents and communities to create more gender- and youth-equitable social norms and expectations; working with local, national and international private sector actors to create more training, job and entrepreneurial opportunities for youth (fostering youth inclusive markets); fostering social networks between younger people and older people as well as among younger people for mutual support and increased inter-connectedness.

At Save the Children we have also developed a few key good programming principles, of which I am reporting a few below:

1. Contextual analysis (including economic structures and systems).  To be effective, all programme design needs to be informed by a set of analysis of structures and systems that shape adolescent and youth’s economic opportunities and constraints. Required assessments include: a market assessment to identify market relevant skills and opportunities; an assessment of existing skill transfer systems (e.g. vocational training systems) in order to identify opportunities and barriers for the most deprived adolescents and youth; a gender analysis to identify barriers in reaching gender equality; and a child rights and needs assessment to identify rights violations and their structural drivers and to identify the most deprived adolescent girls and boys, as well as their specific deprivations and needs.
2. Active and Applied (experiential) learning. Programmes will use interactive learning approaches that foster empowerment through practical hands-on training methodologies for all skills continuously linked to the purpose of improving livelihoods. This link is critical for literacy and numeracy as well as life skills to be applied to real life situations, as opposed to solely for purposes of academic learning. Youth in Action for example, promotes the development of literacy and numeracy skills that can be applied in adolescent and youth livelihood activities and provides adolescents and youth with the opportunity to participate in sessions that simulate day-to-day realities and foster the development of problem-solving and decision-making skills.
3. Adolescent/youth-led and friendly activities. Adolescents and youth can and should play a role in designing and leading activities with adequate and appropriate support to do so. At a minimum, adolescents and youth should be playing a key role in defining the type of skills they want to acquire and opportunities they would like to access, as well as the delivery methods of our programmes. Resources in programmes should be dedicated to develop these skills and participatory leadership roles within and beyond programme activities. Programmes such as Children Lead the Way enable adolescents and youth to actively take on leadership roles in working children’s movements, for example. Activities should be delivered in youth-friendly ways. The Suunata programme in Finland offers an online one-stop-shop counselling and advisory service focusing on career and education guidance as a natural way for young people to communicate. S2S in China developed a phone application to better serve migrant youth who can use it while on the move. [8]
4. Social connectedness/capital.  Group-based activities are foundational to mitigate social isolation and foster interaction and social connectedness. This is especially true in the case of highly deprived adolescent girls and boy who may need to support each other in times of crisis and will benefit from a platform for sharing thoughts and ideas. Examples include: ‘Group based assets’ such as savings or cash transfers, as well as building a platform for asserting rights and access to services; ‘Safe space’ programmes for girls, demonstrating the importance of establishing these groups to prevent HIV;[9]  ‘Group based therapy’ for young men in Liberia, which has proven more effective in reducing violence than the use of cash transfers;[10] ‘Peer to peer groups’ that empower youth to advocate for better working conditions.
5. Earning while learning. Adolescents and youth will often find themselves needing to earn at least basic amounts of income for themselves and their families while they learn new skills to improve their livelihood options.  Programmes should support adolescents and youth to be able to do both, so the poorest can participate.  Scheduling of programme sessions should also work around the availability of the programme participants who may still need to work while attending the programme, or have other commitments in their households. Time use analysis tools[11] may be useful to understand the best times for scheduling programme activities.
6. Scale and sustainability. This entails shifting the focus from direct service provision to catalysing sustainable change through influencing and leveraging local stakeholders in the public and private sector.