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Millions Learning: Scaling up quality education in developing countries tells the story of where and how quality education has scaled in low- and middle-income countries. The story emerges from wide-ranging research on scaling and learning, including 14 in-depth case studies from around the globe. Ultimately, Millions Learning finds that from the slums of New Delhi to the rainforest in Brazil, transformational change in children’s learning is happening at large scale in many places around the world. We find that successful scaling of quality learning often occurs when new approaches and ideas are allowed to develop and grow on the margins and then spread to reach many more children and youth.

Banking on Change is currently one of the largest programmes working with youth savings groups (YSGs). In Phase 1 of the programme, from 2009 to 2012, the focus was on savings groups more broadly; in Phase 2 we have focused on YSGs in Egypt, Ghana, India, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia. Between June 2013 and December 2015 the programme established 11,725 YSGs with over 245,000 members, of whom 132,000 are under 25 and two-thirds are women.

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.

Overcoming the twin challenges of child labour and youth marginalisation is critical for realising the ILO Decent Work Agenda and for social and economic development more generally. The International Labour Organization (ILO) estimates that there were still some 144 million children aged 5-14 years at work worldwide in 2012, accounting for around 12 per cent of total children in this age group.