A Comprehensive Approach to Youth Livelihoods

This blog was originally featured on The MasterCard Foundation’s website on July 29, 2015.

The MasterCard Foundation’s Youth Livelihoods program was recently featured in a special issue of Enterprise Development & Microfinance journal on children and youth “born into and growing up in poverty”. The special issue focuses on how children in poor families and settings can better be supported to make successful transitions into good livelihoods and decent work as young adults” (read the editorial).

The scale of extreme poverty among children and youth in the developing world makes understanding ‘what works’ a pressing concern. The articles in the issue cover a range of important questions for policy and programming and present compelling evidence on the effects of poverty and inequality on children’s physical growth and development. It also explores the effects of different economic interventions, such as social protection, microfinance and training, on access to education, child labour and graduation from poverty.
The Foundation’s Economic Opportunities for Youth program fosters a holistic approach to youth economic development. Because the barriers faced by young women and men in accessing sustainable livelihoods are many, a comprehensive approach to programming is required: a combination of training in a range of market-relevant skills, access to job and business opportunities, and appropriate formal and informal financial services. This article, examining the evolving approach of the Foundation’s projects, emphasizes the importance of recognizing the role of mixed livelihoods in contexts where formal jobs are lacking, and supporting youth engagement in agriculture and agribusiness as viable livelihood opportunities. It also highlights that the challenge can only be adequately addressed through meaningful engagement of a range of stakeholders, including the private sector, government and civil society, and, especially, youth themselves.