LIBRARY RESOURCE

In today’s connected society, infinite information is available to assist job seekers in the journey toward economic empowerment. However, many marginalized young people struggle to compete as they face barriers that impede both access and agency. Young women and girls often face further disadvantage as a result of further social and cultural barriers. In 2017, Plan International and Accenture Development Partners embarked on a journey to improve agency and accessibility for marginalized youth, particularly young women, pursuing training and employment opportunities.

The Power of Vision Model is a “bridge” between current reality and desired future. The model helps create clear purpose and sense of direction in life upon which future decisions, actions and resources are based. The model helps young people to go through a process of self-discovery, draw their vision, break it down into stratified life goals, identify required resources, act on their vision and track progress using simple methodologies.

Although transportation supplies 10-25% of jobs around the world, representation of women in the sector typically falls below 20%. Women are far less likely than men to work in each of the major transport modes – road/surface, rail, air, and maritime – and those with jobs tend to fill the few roles traditionally dominated by women. Young women are similarly scarce along career-paths in infrastructure design, construction, and maintenance; transportation technology; and logistics.

In many countries across the globe youth unemployment remains at critical levels. While we see progress with a diverse array of programmatic innovations, most interventions are not unable to scale up quickly enough to support rapidly growing working age populations and/or help young people develop relevant skills fast enough to meet private sector demand.  How might collaborative, systems change strategies, supported by innovative finance, be deployed in key geographies to make a step-change in the scale and impact on youth unemployment and in a leaner, faster, and more coordinated way?