Scale is Necessary: Evidence-based Approaches to Youth Empowerment and Skilling

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

According to a report from UN Women, roughly 1 in 5 young people globally are not in any education, employment, or training (NEET), a number largely comprised of youth who face barriers to accessing formal education. In Eastern and Southern Africa, NEET rates stretch above 40 percent for some age groups. These young people face a significant skills gap with few pathways to build and practice the skills necessary to support the transition into a productive economic and social life. These barriers leave young people, especially adolescent girls and young women, more vulnerable to poverty, exploitation, and gender-based violence.

Although access to education is expanding, the quality of learning is still lagging behind. This creates a cycle of economic and social disempowerment in adolescence that carries into adulthood. Without the skills and agency to shape their life trajectories, youth potential remains untapped. This has far-reaching effects on economic, social, and political life - not only within communities but for entire countries. So, how can we prepare the hardest-to-reach youth with the skills to become engaged and empowered citizens?

To address the current skills gap, young people need access to practical experiences - grounded in evidence - that can equip them with the tools and competencies to navigate their lives. Multiple proof-of-concept evaluations — the Skills for Effective Entrepreneurship Development (SEED) program in Uganda (Chioda et al 2021), BRAC’s multi-country Empowerment and Livelihood for Adolescents (ELA) Clubs (Bandiera et al 2020), and Educate!’s leadership and entrepreneurship program in Uganda (Chioda et al 2023) — demonstrate that delivering interventions that target skill acquisition and build agency can generate far-reaching, multi-dimensional impacts. While these proof-of-concept studies show encouraging evidence of impact on youth outcomes, a key piece to the puzzle involves reaching adequate scale - ensuring that proven interventions are accessible to the millions of young people who need them.

This panel will convene research and implementation actors from across the development space to discuss how each is leveraging evidence from proof-of-concept interventions to close the skills gap for the hardest-to-reach population, including out-of-school youth and adolescent girls and young women. Panelists and their respective organizations are leaning on evidence to inform, adapt, and scale programming - transferring lessons learned across contexts, demographics, and geographies. BRAC will discuss how it is leveraging both the evidence of rigorously tested models, as well as the lessons and insights of implementing at scale, and applying them to the African context. Educate! will share its experience adapting a model designed for secondary graduates to empower out-of-school youth in East Africa, and J-PAL will provide insights gleaned from research conducted by their network of affiliates for implementers and stakeholders looking to leverage evidence to inform adaptation and direct scale. Panelists will engage audience members in an engaging discussion centered on leveraging evidence to support youth globally. Panelists will also pose key questions such as: What evidence is necessary to generate before we scale? How are we generating evidence as we scale and ensuring that we are learning from and using that evidence? How are we thinking about general equilibrium effects, displacement effects, etc. as our reach grows? How can we measure these and mitigate any potential downsides?

Overall, the panel will present audiences with diverse perspectives, experiences, and insights from work leveraging evidence to inform proof of concepts, adapt model design for impact, and prepare for scale.

Sub Unit

• Youth Development and Education SIG

Chair

• Meghan C Mahoney, Educate!

Individual Presentations

• Building on 15 years of evidence to empower 1.2 million young women in Africa by 2026 - Scott MacMillan, BRAC International

• Closing the Gap: Leveraging Evidence to Build and Scale an Alternative Learning Model for Out-of-School Girls in East Africa - Meghan C Mahoney, Educate!

• Collaborations in Scaling Impact: J-PAL’s experience working with partners to generalize & adapt evidence to scale - Anushka Bansal, J-PAL Global