Happy World Youth Skills Day.

Happy tenth anniversary of World Youth Skills Day, the UN day recognising and celebrating the importance of supporting, equipping and developing global youth for the world of decent work. 

For young people aged 15-24, securing decent work is a huge challenge with nearly 1 in 4 young people not in education, employment or training. That’s 289 million young people missing out on opportunities to earn a decent wage or upskill in educational, vocational and entrepreneurial settings. 

This year, the World Youth Skills Day theme is to do with AI and digital skills for young people. Empowering global youth through digital upskilling and AI education, especially in low-income countries, is critical to investing in the future. Giving young people the digital skillsets that keep pace with swift technological advancements is an investment that will foster more resilient societies and economies.

Here’s how GIF has invested in youth skills development in past (now closed) innovations: 

Educational Initiatives

In 2017, GIF made a $2.3 million grant to Educational Initiatives (EI) for the delivery of Mindspark, personalised adaptive learning (PAL) software to support student learning in government schools in India. 

In India, over 60% of children aged 6-14 cannot read at the second-grade level, despite primary school enrolment rates standing at over 95% and substantial increases in education spending. Personalised teaching can help low-achieving students to catch up. However, it is extremely challenging for teachers to tailor learning to each individual child.

Mindspark delivers personalised instruction to students in a regular classroom setting, benchmarks the learning level of every student and customises material to accurately match the level and rate of progress made by each individual student. It is accessible on and offline, through computers, tablets or smartphones. 

Educational Initiatives successfully integrated Mindspark, improving learning outcomes within 40 government schools in Rajasthan across more than 6,000 students.

Educate!

Young people in Sub-Saharan Africa are twice as likely to be unemployed as any other age cohort. Accessibility to education remains a challenge as systems are not designed to prepare youth for labour market demands. Adolescent girls face additional barriers including external constraints as well as internal, related to self-efficacy and leadership. 

Between 2015 and 2017, GIF provided a total of $609, 674 in Test & Transition funding to the Educate! Experience, a gender-blind leadership and social entrepreneurship programme delivered in the last two years of secondary school by practically-trained youth mentors teaching youth soft skills, such as self-confidence, critical thinking, creativity and grit. The programme aims to develop young people’s skills so that they can confidently lead, innovate and pursue opportunities that can catalyse social change. 

By December 2017 Educate! had successfully expanded the reach of the programme to 502 schools in Uganda, reaching over 19,000 students. Evaluations found that Educate! graduates are statistically more likely to complete high school, with young women 6.9% more likely to complete secondary education, almost enough to virtually close the gender gap completion rates. Female graduates are also 25% more likely to enrol in tertiary education and are 22% more likely to select business and STEM majors in university.

Educate! have used the results from this evaluation and other programmes to rapidly expand its reach, having measurably impacted 250,000 youth across Uganda, Rwanda, and Kenya to date, with an ambitious plan to expand into new countries and reach up to 400,000 people by 2025.