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Bridging the Skills Gap: Insights from Employers, Educators, and Youth in Latin America and the Caribbean presents the findings of a 10-month investigation of the secondary education school-to-work transition and trends in youth employability in Colombia, El Salvador, and the Dominican Republic. These three countries were selected to ensure representation of South America, Central America, and the Caribbean. With support from the FHI Foundation, FHI 360 and Results for Development Institute (R4D) led this study to advance an understanding of the skills gap that prevents companies from finding qualified candidates to employ. 

With funding from the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and in partnership with Silatech, Making Cents International implemented the IFAD Rural Youth Economic Empowerment Program (RYEEP), a three-year grant seeking to increase employment and self-employment of young people aged 15-35 in the Near East and North Africa (NENA) countries of Egypt, Yemen, Morocco and Tunisia. The program provided capacity-building and technical assistance to local institutions to pilot models delivering youth-inclusive financial service (YFS) and non-financial service to rural youth and to the enterprises that employ them. By the program's end, RYEEP pilot projects delivered savings or credit services to 20,543 rural youth and non-financial services to 14,252 rural youth.

With funding from the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and in partnership with Silatech, Making Cents International implemented the IFAD Rural Youth Economic Empowerment Program (RYEEP), a three-year grant seeking to increase employment and self-employment of young people aged 15-35 in the Near East and North Africa (NENA) countries of Egypt, Yemen, Morocco and Tunisia. The program provided capacity-building and technical assistance to local institutions to pilot models delivering youth-inclusive financial services (YFS) and non-financial services to rural youth and to the enterprises that employ them. By the program's end, RYEEP pilot projects delivered savings or credit services to 20,543 rural youth and non-financial services to 14,252 rural youth.

Rural youth in developing countries make up a large and vulnerable group. Globally, three quarters of the poor live in rural areas, and about one-half of this population is young people. This young and growing population confronts a number of challenges, including poor quality of education, lack of basic infrastructure, lack of access to or control of sufficient land for farming, and, for girls in particular, more traditional cultural norms, which severely hinder their ability to build sustainable livelihoods. In addition, accessing the financial services they need to support economic opportunities is more challenging than in urban areas, due to physical distances, the lack of financial products appropriate to rural youth circumstances, limited knowledge and experience with financial services, and poor protection measures. These challenges feed perceptions from rural youth that financial services are not accessible to them, and from providers that rural youth are not bankable.