Approaches to strengthening local workforce development organizations for youth: lessons learned

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

Overview:
This panel discussion weaves two important topics in international education- improving workforce readiness of youth while building the capacity of local workforce development (WFD) training organizations. Taking advantage of an effort by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to facilitate learning across WFD projects in Central America, the panel will highlight the experience of three different projects focused on improving workforce skills, while concurrently building the capacity of existing WFD organizations to achieve sustainability. As part of project implementation, youth in each of the projects are trained through different existing organizations such as training centers, national WFD centers or universities, though often the challenges and opportunities are similar. This panel will provide a case study on efforts by three USAID implementing partners to improve WFD training outcomes while strengthened WFD organizations in Central America. The panel will present the challenges and opportunities encountered by these projects to achieve program sustainability through their capacity building efforts. By exchanging perspectives from the three similar yet distinct WFD projects, the panel will feature lessons learned for future WFD programming in the region as well as in other contexts.

The WFD Learning Agenda:
USAID currently funds a diverse set of activities related to workforce development across the globe. USAID’s Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) education team, identified six different USAID-funded WFD projects in the region with several common elements that justified building a shared learning agenda. The six projects are occurring in the Northern Triangle countries (Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador) as well as Nicaragua and Jamaica. The projects aim to increase workforce readiness and job insertion for at-risk or disadvantaged youth ages 10 to 30 in project countries. Projects offer a variety of WFD and education-related services through existing local WFD organizations. They also work with the local private and public sectors to facilitate employment of trained youth.

The WFD Learning Agenda has four main objectives: (1) share learning across USAID Missions and implementing partners in Central America; (2) report on the achievements of all six projects across four common learning areas that are important for WFD programming: (a) beneficiary participation, (b) beneficiary employment or education after completing the project, (c) engagement with the private sector and other actors in the labor market, and (d) WFD organizational capacity strengthening; and (3) build a community of practice (CoP) around youth WFD. The CoP involves several formal channels for facilitating information exchange including an annual workshop, annual report synthesizing achievements of the six projects, and quarterly virtual meetings.

WFD organizational strengthening:
This panel will focus on WFD organizational capacity strengthening, one of the four focal learning areas identified by the WFD Learning Agenda. The WFD organizations strengthened by projects fall into three different categories: WFD national institutions, tertiary education institutions, and WFD training centers or service providers. National institutions govern and regulate technical and vocational training in the country and in some cases also run training centers. Tertiary education institutions offer degree programs. WFD service providers offer non-formal technical and vocational training. Projects undertake a variety of activities to strengthen these organizations, including conducting organizational capacity assessments to determine support to provide; training organizations on the delivery of WFD training; and revising, updating or creating training programs to respond to labor market needs.

The panel will include presentations by three USAID-funded WFD projects that are part of the WFD Learning Agenda. Each project will focus on the work they are doing with existing local WFD providers, WFD national institutions, and or universities in their countries to provide WFD training to youth. In doing this work, projects build organizations’ capacities, contributing to the sustainability of their interventions by leaving behind institutions with better-trained teachers, market-driven training curricula, and, in some cases, updated infrastructure. The presentations will be based on approaches to organizational strengthening for sustainability and measuring improvements in organizational capacity. In an effort to disseminate learning that may be useful to future WFD programming, presenters will discuss successes and challenges, including what has worked and what has not worked, and key lessons learned.

Sub Unit

• SIG: Youth Development and Education

Chair

• Emilie Bagby, Mathematica Policy Research

Individual Presentations

• Strengthening workforce development providers’ capacity to respond to market demand in El Salvador - Estera Barbarasa, DAI; Caterina Valero, DAI

• Strengthening workforce development providers at the institutional and local level in Honduras - Linsey Jaco, banyan global; Louis Alexander, Banyan Global

• Improving technical training degree programs in Guatemala, Honduras and Jamaica - Alejandro Paredes Trapero, FHI 360; Ana Florez, FHI 360

• Using an implementation science framework to demonstrate the power of local alliances to support positive youth development in conflict-affected Mindanao - Jeanne Moulton, Education Development Center (EDC); Miriam Pahm, Education Development Center, Inc.; Maria Mokamad, EDC

• Systematic literature review about programs-based college and career readiness (CCR) and its impact on enroll and permanence in higher education. - Alexandra Hoyos, Ph.D Student University of Antioquia; Ricardo Gómez, Universidad de Antioquia

Discussant

• Barbara Knox-Seith, US Agency for International Development (USAID)