July 15 marks World Youth Skills Day, which highlights the importance of equipping young people with skills for employment, decent work, and entrepreneurship. To celebrate this day, we are showcasing a few Education Finance Network members’ work in youth workforce development.

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In Colombia, Fundación Corona co-designed the Evolucion Digital Fund, which provides support to young people who are not in education or formal employment by offering financing for their participation in training programs and helps them access quality employment in the digital sector. The Evolucion Digital Fund, which is a collaboration with Lumni and the Global Opportunity Youth Network, is a career impact fund where young people sign an Income Share Agreement (ISA) and commit to paying 15 percent of their income for approximately 41 months upon graduation. Participants in the program are trained in digital skills such as UI/UX design, DevOps (a combination of software development and operations) and data science. Since its launch in 2022, 169 youth have been trained, and 80 percent of them have been placed in jobs with an average salary of 2.5 times the minimum wage.

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Zizi Afrique Foundation, in Kenya, works with technical and vocational education and training (TVET) stakeholders in their Whole Youth Development program. The aim of the program is to make the transition of TVET graduates into the job market easier, primarily through promoting increased attention to soft skills (communication and positive attitudes towards work) in the TVET curriculum.

The Whole Youth Development program was designed to respond to the findings of three studies (available on Zizi Afrique’s website) based on interviews with 10,861 youth across 183 TVET institutions in Kenya, which identified the following challenges to TVET trainees:

• Even with the prerequisite qualifications needed for an entry-level position, young people are unable to acquire employment due to a lack of soft skills. When recruiting entry-level staff, employers look for educational qualifications, soft skills, work experience, technical skills, and attitude and values – in that order.
• Soft skills were perceived as inadequately integrated within the TVET curriculum by institutional heads and instructors.
• Digital literacy and ICT skills are crucial for the success of TVET graduates.
• There is a general negative perception of TVET among the public, with a majority of youth preferring university education to TVET training.

Responding to these findings, Zizi Afrique works with the Ministry of Education and the State Department for TVET to improve the public’s attitude to TVET, and runs several communities of practice for both TVET instructors and managers and for TVET trainees to build capacity in soft skills.

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CHANCEN International launched in Rwanda in 2018 to provide access to high quality skills development through the provision of a fair and ethical Income Share Agreement (ISA) model successfully utilized in Germany for over 25 years.  With an intentional focus on excluded youth, Chancen has financed 2,631 members to date in a variety of market-led programs ranging from coding to plumbing to land surveying. 67 percent of Chancen members are women, 63 percent come from rural areas, and 62 percent come from households earning less than $5 per day. The average income of Chancen members across both employed and unemployed is nearly four times the national median income in Rwanda.

“I may have been a single mother in rural eastern Rwanda, but I refused to let that limit my potential. With the support of Chancen, I enrolled in a STEM program that aimed to increase female participation in STEM programs, I am paving the way for more women to pursue their dreams and make a difference in their communities.” – Elyse Uwihirwe, Chancen member

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Fundación Frisby provides TVET, entrepreneurship training, life skills training, and teacher training in Colombia through the following programs:

• La Universidad en Tu Colegio: TVET for 10th and 11th graders from public schools
• Acuma: entrepreneurial training for 10th and 11th graders
• Aprender Jugando: development of life skills through soccer for children and adolescents

“La Universidad en Tu Colegio has given me tools to be a better person and to profile myself as a professional and continue with my college career.” – Juan Pablo Grisales Salazar, student at La Universidad en Tu Colegio

To learn more about Fundación Frisby’s work, check out their Instagram account.