Highlighted Session: How youth-led research surfaces gaps and influences policy in local youth workforce development systems

Group Submission Type: Highlighted Paper Session

Proposal

Globally, many young people are facing an employment crisis. Studies show that 4 in 10 young people never transition into stable employment even once they are older (Alam and de Diego, UNICEF, 2019). This youth unemployment crisis is worsened by other changes that put pressure on young people to quickly adapt — among them ongoing digital transformations and the COVID-19 pandemic, migration, climate change, food insecurity, and social movements like #MeToo. For youth, the struggle to transition into work is an urgent personal crisis that shapes their lifelong wellbeing, economic security, and social contributions. For their communities, youth unemployment has serious implications on economic growth and productivity, worsening social instability, division, crime, inequality, and migration. Donors, program designers, and educators need up-to-date data and evidence to design responsive and relevant support models that have a positive impact on young people’s employment outcomes.

Decision-makers for youth employment research, programs, and policies often seek to understand youth lived experiences from a macroeconomic lens. These efforts study young people’s employment experiences based on economic outputs: “employed,” “unemployed,” and, “not in education or employment” (NEET). This view is essential to inform program and policy design decisions, fix broader labor market gaps, and invigorate markets to create jobs. However, it is likely not enough alone.

Our team’s learning from practice shows us that essential, top-down macroeconomic and quantitative studies about youth employment do not capture important voices and perspectives. These voices are those of the most underserved youth, those directly affected by employment problems, and those who deeply understand the local context and culture from a human-centered, intersectional lens. Systematic reviews of the evidence highlight that these grassroots perspectives are essential for greater impact – the most effective and impactful youth employment program models understand and are directly responsive to youth and local realities, constraints, and contexts.

This kind of responsiveness requires an in depth understanding of youth lives and circumstances along with the overlapping impacts of their social identities, cultures, societal and structural constraints (an intersectional lens). It is resource-intensive to obtain quantitative data to provide this level of nuance through most data systems and research models.

Youth-led research can fill some of these gaps. It can take many forms. Under the USAID-funded Youth Excel activity, youth-led research sought to uncover young people’s lived perspectives and realities about the transition to work, and youth leaders used their findings to influence policy-makers.

Central to our and our partners’ approach is that young people who represent and are deeply familiar with the lived experiences of the populations studied are leading key research decisions and processes, with support and facilitation from more experienced researchers as needed in research methods, tools development, and ethical approaches.

In this panel presentation, we will share four specific examples where youth-led research uncovered important gaps in local and global bodies of knowledge around youth workforce development systems. We will also explore what changes to policy or practice were made as a result of the findings and what ripple effects have occurred based on these findings to date.

Sub Unit

• Youth Development and Education SIG

Chair

• Rachel Surkin, IREX

Individual Presentations

• Inclusion and exclusion in youth economic opportunities: identities, opportunities, and barriers - Christopher Johnstone, University of Minnesota

• Developing a new Learning-to-Earning Guide: How to design employment solutions that meet youth needs - Tsega Tadesse Belachew, University of Maryland

Discussant

• Jessica Lopez, DDI Center for Education, United States Agency for International Development (USAID)