Building sustainable livelihoods for adolescent and youth empowerment

This week Save the Children is celebrating young people’s skills for success as part of World Youth Skills Day #WYSD2018 – July 15, 2018. We are promoting young people’s learning and skill development; and sharing their stories as they transition to decent and safe work. By equipping young people with the foundational skills for their livelihood development; platforms to voice their opinion and lead change; and equitable opportunities for their employment pathways, the future will be a bright one.

However, this day also marks an important reflection for us as a global community on the major gaps and inequalities which exist around the world for young people. Adolescents and youth who grow up in vulnerable situations can find it difficult to transition to productive and dignified work, with limited education and livelihood pathway options.

• 500 million of today’s youth are not in employment, education or training
• ¼ of young people cannot find work which pays more than $1.25 per day, the international threshold of extreme poverty.
• ¾ of young workers ages 15-29 are engaged in informal work, the sector where most exploitative and hazardous work conditions occur.

One key barrier to safe and decent work for young people is the mismatch in skills taught in formal education and lack of quality education. In low-income countries there are high dropout rates at the secondary school level; most who are living in rural contexts and in situations of poverty.

Developing Youth Skills for Social & Economic Empowerment

At Save the Children, we recognize the importance of developing adolescent’s and youth’s skills and positive identity to socially and economically empower young people. We have developed a menu of foundational skill topics and a library of curricular resources, adaptable to local contexts and labour markets.

Save the Children’s Approach to Developing Youth Skills

We also know, it’s not just what you teach, but how you teach. Save the Children’s approach to building skills for adolescent and youth empowerment focuses on three key pillars:

1. Creating a supportive learning environment: A space where young people feel safe, motivated and able to express their opinions and meaningfully participate in learning both inside and outside of a classroom with teachers, peers, family and community mentors.
2. Participatory & experiential learning: Facilitators guide youth through contextualized curricula by explaining, demonstrating and providing opportunities for adolescents and youth to practice their skills using participatory and experiential methodologies.
3. Real-life practice: Girls and boys practice their skills outside the classroom, in real-life situations to increase the likelihood that they apply their new skills and increases their motivation for further program participation.

Youth Skills for Gender Equality

Gender equality is at the centre of our work. Our curricula and methodologies are designed to support girls and boys to think critically about gender-based barriers. SC staff, local partners and community workers are trained to ensure gender-safe learning spaces for girls and boys; integrate gender equality topics into discussions; use gender-responsive and inclusive facilitation techniques; and identify and reflect on their own individual gender biases. We also engage family and community members to address discriminatory social norms and behaviours to address the root causes of gender inequalities.

Youth Skills for Resilience

In situations of crisis, Save the Children humanitarian assistance programming for girls and boys works to build resilience on multiple levels – including support to systems, communities, families and individual children and youth. Our skills programming for adolescents and youth works to promote young people’s ability to respond to crises by building their capacity for critical analysis and decision-making, disaster risk reduction strategies for themselves and their communities, violence prevention, peace-building, and self-confidence and psychosocial support interventions to be able to recover from traumatic events.

Youth Skills for Active Participation

We program for and with adolescents and youth, where young people are engaged in the implementation, monitoring and evaluation to ensure their voices are heard, but also as a means to further build their skills, leadership and career opportunities for the future. This includes program advisory councils, youth-led action research, youth clubs for advocacy and awareness, girl champions, and youth research fellows.

Youth Skills for the Future

Save the Children also recognizes that as the world changes and skills change, how we learn and what we learn needs to change with it. A key part of our global learning agenda is developing new innovations of how technology can be used to enhance young people’s skills development, as well as how young people can engage with technology to solve local challenges. In Indonesia, we launched an innovative mobile application called Dooit! with Praekelt for adolescent girls to improve their financial capabilities, strengthen their life skills and help them save towards their educational and career goals. Recently, a new pilot in Vietnam is working to integrate Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality (AR/VR) in vocational schools to strengthen key communication and job preparedness skills and help youth learn about the world of work.