Challenges

Plan International’s award-winning Youth Employment Solutions (YES!) Digital Ecosystem increases the quality of youth employment programming. Furthermore, it facilitates implementation at scale by providing useful market information, engaging learning experiences, supportive career guidance and job linkages (especially youth within Plan International’s Youth Employment and Entrepreneurship projects). Underpinning all of this is a sector information system that provides deep, meaningful insights for monitoring and evaluation. 

Youth unemployment is a growing global problem. In the next decade, nearly one billion young people will enter the labor market, but many of them will face a future of irregular and informal employment. Currently, almost 90% of the world’s 1.8 billion young people live in developing countries. Over 600 million of those aged 15-24 are not in education, employment, or training, and about 75 million are trained yet remain unemployed. Women are disproportionately affected, with female youth unemployment higher by 80% than among young men in North Africa and Arab states. Among those who are employed, an estimated 23% are earning less than US$1.25 a day.

Toward a Solution

Plan International developed a unique approach to Youth Economic Empowerment: the Youth Employment Solutions model, which follows a six step process and is adapted to the local context of every country Plan International works in.

The YES!DIGITAL Ecosystem is embedded within this model, beginning with a labor market scan (complemented by the MarketScan tool) that aims to identify companies’ recruitment needs, the situation of the youth, and the mismatch between the skills they have and the skills they need to find a job. The content of the trainings is developed based on the findings. Plan International staff are also able to access tools and resources through its platform for practitioners called YES!HUB.

Young people enrolled in the program follow trainings in essential soft and hard skills, such as career counselling, life skills, employability and technical skills. They are either trained to be ready to work in a specific sector, or to become entrepreneurs. A blended learning approach is employed, in which YES!ACADEMY is introduced and used where appropriate. YES!ACADEMY is a Moodle-based learning platform which has been heavily customized to create high-level user experience and mid-high level gamification. Plan International then helps bridge the gap between training and employment by supporting young people to find a job placement or start their own enterprise.

After the training, Plan International continues to monitor the progress of each youth using YES!ME which is customized and aligned to the M&E framework of the project/program. With the knowledge and information gathered from YES!ME, it allows the country increase the quality of youth employment programs, facilitate the implementation of these programs at scale, and maximize their impact through well-researched ways.

To compliment the YES!ACADEMY, users can freely access TESSA – a Facebook Messenger-based chatbot that assists in building resumes – to find training and employment opportunities, and guiding users through the job application process. TESSA shares its database with CNEXT, the Digital Ecosystem’s up and coming career guidance and job matching platform designed especially for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds.

One of the most noteworthy efforts in which the YES! Digital Ecosystem is at the heart is Plan International’s Wired for Work project funded by Accenture. Running from January 2018 to December 2020 in Indonesia and the Philippines, it aims to directly provide life and technical skills training to ~14,000 young people, of which around 6,000 will get decent jobs of their choosing. 35,000 more are expected to indirectly benefit from the project.

In August 2019, a growth and sustainability strategy was developed for the YES! Digital Ecosystem. Within three years, the system looks to see the full integration of products on one platform, the adoption of a social enterprise-cooperative model in its operations, a significant reduction in monthly costs-per-beneficiary from US$25.26 to US$5.33, and a growth of the Ecosystem’s user base to 25,000 individuals.

The strategic partnerships formed by Plan International with governments, other civil society organizations, decision-makers, and most importantly the private sector are key to the success of its Youth Employment and Entrepreneurship programs, and the sustainability of efforts around the YES! Digital Ecosystem. Plan International is a founding member of the Solutions for Youth Employment (S4YE) coalition, which is committed to providing access to job opportunities for 150 million youth around the world.