The Employment and Entrepreneurship sub-program under Prospects Liberia provides young entrepreneurs, aged 18 to 35 years, business skills training and the opportunity to apply for a microgrant (USD 250 to USD 750) to start up or expand a business through a Youth Investment Fund. Data captured throughout the program indicates that significantly more women than… Read More LEARNING PAPER: Young Female Entrepreneurs
New Prospects Quarterly Report detailing the work of the Employment & Entrepreneurship Services, New Day, Research & Learning, Community-Driven Psychosocial Support, and the work of a sample of our Partnerships from July to September 2016. Find it here.
Prospects’ Psychosocial Team conducted a baseline study which seeks to explore the perceptions and behaviours of young people engaged in Prospects’ Psycho-social program. It focuses on five key thematic areas: 1) livelihoods, 2) financial inclusion, 3) relationships and community participation, 4) life skills and risky behaviour, and 5) youth resilience. The findings indicate that youth… Read More Psychosocial Baseline Findings
New Prospects Quarterly Report detailing the work of the Employment & Entrepreneurship Services, New Day, Research & Learning, Community-Driven Psychosocial Support, and the work of a sample of our Partnerships from January-March 2016. Find it here.
The term ‘experiential learning’ is often mistakenly used to describe any learning experience that involves participatory activities. Yet, this misconception often fails to include real-world application of learning and therefore can fall short of lasting behavioural change. Experiential learning methodology is core to the Prospects psychosocial programme in Liberia, which builds ‘pre-employment skills’ in 3,500… Read More PRACTICE PAPER: Experiential Learning
Apprenticeship programmes hold the promise of smoothing the school-to-work transition through connecting unemployed youth with jobs, adding critical work experience to CVs, and building both soft skills and technical skills that can only be learned from practice. Particularly in contexts where technical or vocational training is weak, apprenticeships can be a vital step in preparing… Read More PRACTICE PAPER: PROSPECTS APPRENTICESHIP PROGRAMME – A guide to design and implementation
How can financial inclusion outcomes be garnered even when this is not the primary purpose of a program or intervention? Phase I of the Prospects youth employment program used two different cash transfer modalities, mobile money and bank accounts, for two different employment interventions: an apprenticeship program and an entrepreneurship cash grant program. While these… Read More LEARNING PAPER: Cashing in on Transfer Modalities: Learnings from Prospects programme in the use of Mobile Money and Bank Accounts
Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) is a crucial component of programme management, used to satisfy a range of information needs for donors, implementers, and the wider development community alike. These information needs typically fall within one of two categories: information used to ‘prove’ an intervention’s activities, impact, or model; or information used to ‘improve’ programming, through… Read More PRACTICE PAPER: BUILT TO (IM)PROVE Leveraging realtime M&E for adaptive youth employment programming
New Prospects Quarterly Report detailing the work of the Employment & Entrepreneurship Services, New Day, Research & Learning, Community-Driven Psychosocial Support, and the work of a sample of our Partnerships from January-March 2016. Find it here.
Tackling youth unemployment in Liberia involves addressing head-on some pretty big questions. What does work mean to Liberia’s youth? What drives them to seek out employment? What are employers’ perceptions of Liberian youth? What skills do they most value? From June 2014 through May 2015, Mercy Corps conducted a series of market research projects with job-seeking… Read More LEARNING PAPER: Real Talk with Liberia’s Youth & Employers
