Blog

The new USAID-funded YouthLead.org platform is a new collaboration marketplace where young changemakers aged 15-35 can forge connections with a growing community of peers and partners.

In USAID, we need to worry more about aging populations than we do now. That includes, for those still in their working-age years, how to work longer, healthier, and smarter.

Reflecting on emerging themes from the 2018 Making Cents International Global Youth Economic Opportunities Summit, here are four steps to promote new economic opportunities for girls.

In West Africa, young people are struggling to find viable jobs in their communities. The myAgro program encourages them to become entrepreneurs by employing them to work with farmers and savings groups.

At ACDI/VOCA's Amplifying our Impact event at USAID, ACDI/VOCA highlighted several projects pivoting to a market systems approach across a variety of different geographies and contexts.

In our pursuit of inclusive agriculture-led growth, we increasingly understand how important it is that we put more emphasis on youth.

In 2016, the Global Communities' USAID Cooperative Development Program piloted a project in Nairobi to work with young, urban professionals interested in starting their own cooperative businesses.

Donors and practitioners working in value chain and market development for the benefit of the poor have made significant progress in developing a better contextual and conceptual understanding of the complex and dynamic nature of market systems and their enabling environment contexts.

The USAID Agro Horizon project helped young entrepreneurs set up a dried fruit processing facility to produce trail mix, which allowed them to enter new supermarket chains and develop business skills.

The Victory Against Malnutrition Project (ViM) was established to is reduce food insecurity by increasing and diversifying agricultural and livestock production, improving farmers’ incomes and household health and nutrition.

USAID is helping the Government of Tanzania to improve communities’ understanding of land rights, support village land use planning, and clarify, document and certify property rights.

This activity was one of four winners of Chemonics’ recent Market Systems and Youth Enterprise Development Innovation Contest.

At Chemonics, the Economic Growth and Trade Practice and the Education and Youth Practice joined forces to kick off 2018 with the launch of our Market Systems and Youth Enterprise Development Innovation Contest.

Youth savings groups promote positive asset building and introduces girls, boys, young women and men to the elements of personal finance, entrepreneurship, and life skills. 

Read up on emerging evidence on programming for a youth-inclusive economic transformation in rural and peri-urban areas to support youth employment and livelihoods, including entry into work.

Nutrition interventions alone cannot end malnutrition. Agricultural development programs need to embed nutrition-sensitive interventions into their planning and implementation.

Learn why many of the strides made in vocational training have been linked to interventions providing soft skills rather than the hard skills that projects often target.

Read how a project in the Haitian apparel sector is taking on the challenge of demonstrating development projects' indirect, broader systemic impacts.

Learn how demand-side interventions can be powerful tools to increase women’s economic participation.

Learn how the PAGE program is empowering adolescent girls and building their job skills in schools in low-income communities in New Delhi, India.

The deeper understanding that comes from a robust review of evidence and lessons learned will identify good practices that enhance women’s, men’s, boys’, and girls’ livelihoods and well-being throughout agricultural systems.

In the conversation around institutional support to facilitate growth of youth-led small enterprises, you'll find schools are an inevitable talking point.

In this video, Gary Walker from USAID, Laura Lippman from FHI 360 and Tim Nourse, President of Making Cents, talk about employment challenges facing youth and how implementing soft skills can increase workforce success.

Establishing long-term behavior change and habits in youth - especially when it comes to finance - is tricky business.

Financial inclusion and youth development practitioners are constantly challenged to scale the lessons from their work through policy change. But this often involves multiple levels of government and is not necessarily straightforward.