For anyone working in development, the topic of youth unemployment is central, remains virtually unabated, and drives much debate over the right paths, strategies, partnerships, and funding mechanisms. Yet, for those organizations in the trenches, they know that working on improving youth employability can be a critical lever to addressing other problems such as security, drug addiction, and teenage pregnancy. This dynamic is not lost on the Multilateral Investment Fund (MIF), the innovation lab of the Inter-American Development Bank Group, nor on the International Youth Foundation (IYF).
For over 15 years the MIF and IYF have been working together to address youth unemployment in novel ways. In 2001, the partners launched entra21, a regional initiative that aimed to improve the employability of youth, ages 16-29, through information technology (IT) skills and by building a bridge between labor market needs and youth whose interests and capabilities made them ideal candidates to fill the IT skills gap. In the 10 years of entra21, over 135,000 youth were prepared for the world of work in 22 Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries through 59 pilot projects, and several of the pilots successfully scaled up methodologies with the public sector. In terms of impact, six months after exiting the program, 54 percent of youth were working and 20 percent were back in school. And, a wide range of companies had a high level of satisfaction with the youths’ performance based on company needs.
entra21 laid a solid foundation for a new endeavor: the New Employment Opportunities (NEO) program that launched in LAC in 2012, aiming to improve employment opportunities for 1 million youth over a decade. Building on the entra21 experience, over the last five years, the NEO partners have been experimenting with new models to address youth unemployment linked to employer demand and a fast-growing technology industry.
NEO uses a novel mechanism: multi-stakeholder alliances where public, private, and civil society sectors work together to foster alignment between the education and training system and the productive sector demands in a country. The NEO model aims to serve youth by combining the provision of technical and life skills development with job search support and counseling. A key ingredient in the NEO program is the focus on life skills: work ethic, attitude, communication skills, and emotional intelligence. IYF’s life skills curriculum, Passport to Success, which has been implemented globally, has proven to be an effective way to improve the employability skills of disadvantaged youth, because it is well structured, practical, and involves careful training of facilitators and master trainers to install local capacity.
Five years after the launch of NEO, the experience has shown that programs with the best results take a comprehensive approach, focus on the quality of the youth employment services, and use practical tools to identify and close skills gaps and skills mismatches in the labor market. Indeed, NEO’s work with individual providers from both the public and the NGO sector through the NEO quality system is worth emphasizing here. NEO’s quality system provides a combination of services such as an online portal, self-evaluation against the NEO quality standards, face-to-face technical assistance workshops and virtual coaching to teachers, psychologists, counselors, job placement officers and supervisors in education, training and employment centers, to learn new techniques, empower them to put them into practice, and evaluate the impact that they have on the youth they serve. In other words, it is allowing the centers to monitor and measure quality in a practical way and to commit to a culture of continuous improvement.
Another success factor is the direct involvement of employers. The NEO program counts on the participation of five multinational companies operating in LAC—Arcos Dorados, Caterpillar Foundation, CEMEX, Microsoft, and Walmart—and the involvement of over 1,000 companies working with NEO alliances in 10 countries to offer internships and jobs. Companies are also being engaged to close the skills gaps, by validating labor market assessments and participating in the development of new curricula to effectively address the skills gaps identified.
The progress of the NEO program was brought to life at an international conference on April 25, 2017. Representatives from each of the 10 alliances came together with the goal of sharing lessons. Older alliances that were established in 2012 in the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Colombia, Panama, and Paraguay were paired with newer alliances in Brazil, Chile, El Salvador, Jamaica, and Peru.
So, what has happened since the launch of NEO? Several achievements are especially noteworthy and unprecedented:
• More than 150,000 youth have enrolled in NEO services;
• Alliances among business, government, and civil society have been constituted in 10 countries;
• Over 1,500 businesses have offered internships and jobs;
• 126 training and employment providers have improved the quality of their services; and
• So far, approximately 61% of youth have found work after leaving training.
These results will continue to grow in the coming years, and they are possible not only because of an investment of $137 million, but also because of the active involvement of the more than 140 dedicated public, private, and civil society organizations that have joined forces through NEO. Ultimately, by improving public training systems and employment services, NEO is poised to reach its goal of 1 million youth trained.
The April 25 event was an opportunity to discuss the benefits and challenges of an alliance-based approach to addressing the region’s youth employment challenge and an opportunity to share learnings about leading social change collectively. Participants were very candid and recognized that working as an alliance is difficult. “It’s a bumpy road,” they said, and requires a “different mindset” to be open to collaboration for the common good and to achieve employment goals. The essential takeaway on alliances is that each sector and each alliance member, brings part of the solution and needs to contribute with resources for infrastructure, training, curricula, technical manuals, quality assurance systems, job validation, and linkages to employers. The sum of the parts is much greater than the individual contributions.
With youth unemployment rates in the region running at 13.6 percent, nearly three times that of adults, these lessons are critical. NEO’s achievements so far are no small feat, but the partners have little time to celebrate. The future of work in today’s digital world demands new skill sets and learning techniques for all.