Youth Employment Programs - Independent Evaluation Group

Box C.3The Youth Employment NetworkThe Youth Employment Network (YEN) emphasizes four global priorities—employability, entrepreneurship,employment creation, and equal opportunities.It is comprised of the following four areas:The Lead Country Network includes countries a that have committed to prioritize youth employment.Network countries share learning and experiences on youth employment through thebenchmarking exercise, focusing on collecting: (i) eight youth labor market indicators; b and (ii)narrative information on youth employment interventions. Countries have to commit to thepreparation and implementation of a National Action Plan (NAP) on youth employment witha coherent set of policies that are integrated in national development policies and budgets. Areview of 41 such plans finds that most address education, vocational training, work experience,career guidance, job counseling, and the school-to-work transition. Many countries alsohave initiatives to address equal opportunities and encourage entrepreneurship (United Nations2007).The Evaluation Clinics provide technical and financial support to policymakers to help countriesdesign and implement impact evaluations.The Youth to Youth Fund provides grants to fund small-scale youth entrepreneurship projectsin East and West Africa. The funds are allocated based on competition among a pool of applicants.About 70 percent of the proposals are from rural areas.The YEN Marketplace is an online space for the global youth employment community to exchangeor offer innovative ideas, best practice, expertise, and advice, as well as collaborationand partnership.Since the inception of the YEN, the ILO has hosted the YEN Secretariat. Although YEN has hadsome success in resource mobilization, the funding issue remains a major obstacle to the sustainabilityof YEN and its Secretariat.Source: ILO Youth Employment Network, http://www.ilo.org/public/english/employment/yen/a. Bangladesh, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ecuador, Egypt, Ghana, Indonesia, Jamaica, Kiribati, Liberia,Mali, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Sri Lanka, Syria, Togo, Tanzania, Turkey, Vanuatu, and Zambia.b. Indicators include the distribution of youth by primary activity, youth unemployment rate, relaxed youthunemployment rate (the number of unemployed youth plus the number of discouraged youth divided by theyouth labor force), youth employment-to-population ratio, status of young workers in employment, youthemployment by sector, mean earnings for wage and salaried workers, and educational attainment of theyouth labor force.Note1. The type of skills is targeted to sectors with high demand. For example, theprogram in Liberia includes skills development on hospitality, house painting,professional driving, office/computer skills, and security guard services. InRwanda, the technical training is in areas such as horticulture, agro-processing,tourism, arts and crafts, technical servicing, and solar technology, informationand communications technology, and secretarial services.Appendix C: Strategies and Collaboration 99