Session 1: What Matters for Girls Economic Empowerment: Is it the “Bundle”?

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There is a growing body of evidence illustrating the effectiveness of different “approaches” for youth employment and economic empowerment programs – ranging from simpler unconditional cash transfers to more complex, multi-pronged interventions. There is the urge to look for a silver bullet, an ideal program that can be replicated across contexts and populations. However, even if a program works in one context with a specific population, implementation across contexts and at scale can be challenging. We need to disentangle what really matters and understand all the mechanisms at play. Through the frames of research conducted on three programs (BRAC’s Empowerment for Livelihood for Adolescents, Save the Children’s Kishoree Kontha and Population Council’s Balika), we will debate the evidence on and what we have learned about how these programs for adolescent girls can prepare them for economic independence. Is there a common narrative across these studies? Are there common key factors enabling empowerment for girls across these three programs? What can the long-term evidence tell us about how program components should be sequenced? Do we have enough evidence to know what types of interventions are fundamental for a girl's economic empowerment? How do we know how much is enough evidence?

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Check out our resources list for relevant research for this session and the session slides.

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Session 2: What Matters for Sustainable Youth Self Employment: Is it Just Cash?

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For many of the most deprived youth around the world, formal wage employment is not an option due to the context in which they live. To that end, many in the youth employment field have worked to promote sustainable self-employment for the most deprived youth. However, evidence from the field strongly suggests that even when youth taught the right skills they need to start a business, other contextual issues influence whether their businesses will succeed and thrive. Using new evidence from the ten-year follow up of the Government of Uganda’s Youth Opportunities Program (YOP) that provided conditional cash transfers to youth, we will explore which enabling conditions allow youth to succeed in self-employment. This session will explore questions including: Was YOP cost-effective? What types of economic conditions must be met for these businesses to survive and flourish? Which environmental factors, including family and community, are conducive to youth self-employment? What can we learn from the evaluation that is applicable to other contexts?

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Check out our resources list for relevant research for this session and the session slides.

 

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Session 3: Are We Robbing Prakesh to Pay Priyanka? 

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Often a significant challenge for youth to gain employment in low-income countries is the shortage of full-time wage opportunities (Fox and Kaul, 2017). The research illustrates that increasing demand for youth labor can address youth unemployment and crowding out. Yet, most youth-serving organizations do not engage with demand-side challenges or labor market issues. In this session, we will debate whether well-intentioned organizations are inadvertently displacing youth, or other deprived groups, who do not participate in our programs. It will also explore outstanding questions including, What do we know about displacement effects? Who gets displaced and how?  How do we measure or account for displacement in the program we are already running? Should we? How can we prevent it? When does displacement happen and who is most vulnerable to it? Can we learn from evidence in other sectors?

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Check out our resources list for relevant research for this session and the session slides.

 

 

Session 4: A Future of Decent Work for the Most Deprived: Zombie Apocalypse or Superhero Adventure? 

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Several recent reports such as Accenture’s New Skills Now have analyzed the increasing digitization of work, the rise of the gig economy, and the changing nature of work. Automation is transforming jobs from banking to agriculture. Also, increasing evidence has amply documented  the importance of not only digital skills, but also “socio-emotional”/ “non-cognitive”/”transferable life” skills on workforce success for youth, including for deprived youth. In this rapidly changing world of work, we cannot predict the specific technical skills that will be needed in entry-level jobs, but what we do know is that youth need skills that allow them to adapt and be resilient. Recent studies for both rural and urban contexts and for both self employment and employment have shown that how programs are implemented matter to skills acquisition, including targeting, mode of delivery (e.g. training, apprenticeship, etc), delivery mechanisms. In this session, using evidence from entrepreneurship programs in Africa and employment programs in Asia, we will address questions such as: How does target group and context affect which skills are effective to business and employment outcomes? What is the best ways to delivery these skills? How can the evidence presented be used to improve programming? What constraints exist in using findings like these? How can we advise Accenture and other donors on how to impart necessary skills to youth? What do we still need to know to design programs that build youth skills?

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Check out our resources list for relevant research for this session and the session slides.

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Session 5: Call to Action – a Five Year Learning Agenda Working Session

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Objectives:

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1. Identify priority questions regarding the topics addressed in the morning to fill research gaps over the next five years

2. Gain commitments from participants to increase collaboration to answer these research questions

3. Identify ways the field can better use research results to improve programs

4. Post-E2A Forum, Save the Children will collaborate with the event partners (BRAC, J-PAL and 3ie), as well as any other organizations that volunteer, on a white paper. The white paper will address directions toward a learning agenda on the topics addressed in the E2A event.

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Check out the session slides. 

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