LIBRARY RESOURCE

Youth unemployment remains a major challenge for many developing economies that cannot create enough jobs to absorb the emerging labor market. Microwork, an online outsourcing of services, is an industry that expands entry level jobs.  However, no comprehensive resources currently exist to prepare youth for succeeding in this industry. RTI International, Future Work Consulting and Banyan Global experts will present findings from a Center for Global Youth Employment-funded study mapping the current trends, challenges and success factors surrounding microwork.  The panel will synthesize the study’s findings determining microwork’s sustainability as an effective tool for transitioning disadvantaged youth into employment. 

The presence of an informed, professional facilitator is essential as young people prepare to enter the world of work. MasterCoach is a certified training program that uses powerful digital and face to face experiential learning methods to create a transformative experience for youth facilitators who are on the job. Quest Alliance will present the approach, design, content and technology developed to empower youth facilitators to make the shift from being a sage on the stage to a guide on the side.

Financial inclusion and youth development practitioners are constantly challenged to scale the lessons from their work through policy change. This often involves an interplay between local, regional and national government, and is not necessarily straightforward or unidirectional. This session will explore how youth financial inclusion/education initiatives in Vietnam, India, and the US used project results to effect policy change at various levels of government. The session is designed to provide practitioners with a better understanding of how to translate project learnings into effective advocacy through an understanding of the often complex, opportunistic, and multilayered nature of the policy change process.

Three trends in technology are revolutionizing finance and in particular our ability to include youth in the formal financial sector.  They are: Mobility – or the ability to remain connected wherever we are; Ubiquity – where we all have access to high powered tools (software) and Big Data – where number crunching programs enable analysis at an unprecedented scale.  Learn from representatives of leading financial inclusion programs on how they are using these three trends to lower costs, improve analytical ability, and raise funds from new areas – all to promote access to finance for youth in the US and overseas.