The aim of an employment or livelihoods support initiative is to increase the value of a young people in the market. This is a challenging task. An ever-expanding majority of young people is seeking livelihoods in the informal sector where productive skills are much in demand. Young people with intermediate levels of education often have higher levels of unemployment than those with little education; schooling does not necessarily translate into value in the market. In Egypt there are an estimated seven million educated unemployed, most of whom are tertiary graduates (Crump, et al, 1999). This all-too-common pattern needs to be understood if the value of youth is to be increased. Increasing the market value of an individual involves increasing the skills and knowledge needed in economic growth sectors.

Increasing knowledge without increasing productive skills fails to serve youth and wastes scarce resources. Increasing the value of young people is a particular challenge, especially in SSA where economic growth seldom exceeds three percent (Fluitman, 2001). In most developing countries young people are the majority of new labour market entrants. It is a common scenario to find high population growth, low economic growth and stagnant or contracting “decent work” opportunities, with all three exacerbated by education polices that misdirect knowledge resources.

The PathFinder Framework offers a systematic approach to addressing this situation. The PathFinder will help: 1) recognise the extent and nature of the challenge, and 2) formulate useful responses on a significant scale. Box 2.11, below, outlines the goal and practices of the economic component of the PathFinder Framework.

Goal:  To increase the value of young people in the marketplace.

Practices:

§          Identify appropriate opportunities in growth sectors

§          Establish a market niche

§          Anticipate and respond to demand for skills and knowledge

Niche oriented initiatives can target micro-level needs (e.g., training, mentoring); meso-level needs (institution and network building); or macro-level needs (e.g., policy interventions, labour mobility). All three levels of interventions working in harmony are needed in order to achieve broad and meaningful impact.

A program must prioritise and align community needs with tangible opportunity and value. This in turn sets the stage for accessing resources and identifying and forming partnerships. This implies that the design, implementation, and assessment of a program must draw upon the input and productive resources of the private and public sectors in the community.

All of the surveyed projects maintained that aligning their interventions with the priorities of the communities they serve is essential to creating value for all stakeholders. In most cases, demand from young people, their parents, the private sector, and from civil society organisations was instrumental in the creation of the livelihood or enterprise program (Morales Gomez, 2001). It is essential that an initiative has the moral and material support of the community and is focused on a priority target group.

The field surveys identified a variety of both unusual and conventional approaches to assessing priorities and opportunities and to identifying available resources. In most cases the process was internally driven and consultative in order to establish ownership and in quest of sustainability. Whatever process used, documentation was needed to convince donors and supporters of the viability and legitimacy of the initiative proposed.

In some cases a formal needs analysis was conducted using an established methodology. This approach, while tending to be thorough and “professional”, carries the risks of being costly and lacking community ownership. However, being systematic does not necessarily imply high cost (Chowdhury, 2001). More formal approaches tended to be used in the development of national programs (Morales Gomez, 2001)

In other cases a more informal process (see Box 2.8 below, overleaf) was used, often driven by the intuition and instinct of a particular individual (inspired by an event or realisation). Informal processes were also found that expressed collectively wishes and insights that were common knowledge within the community. A “social entrepreneur” often drove this more informal approach, one who saw a need that was crying out to be fulfilled and who stepped forward to champion tackling the problem. In some cases these individuals initially acted independently to galvanise and mobilise community interest (Chowdhury, 2001).

In conventional needs analysis the focus is on “needs” rather than on the opportunities and the resources needed to capture value and benefit. The need for generating livelihoods opportunities for young people is obvious. What is not so obvious are the strategies and resources needed to turn opportunities into productive livelihoods. Some form of assessment is needed to identify and mobilise the resources needed to grasp opportunities and to create the basis for partnerships with both organisations and individuals. Assessing needs, opportunities and resources is not a one-time-only event. Assessment can and should be the result of dynamic and constant interaction among host communities and support initiatives.

Most new opportunities are emerging in growth sectors. Many of these growth sectors will be ‘youth friendly’ or include youth friendly market niches. Livelihood interventions must anticipate the skills and knowledge young people will need in order to respond to these opportunities. This understanding of both markets and the needs of young people is essential if an intervention is to be relevant and useful.

The need to respond to current market needs is neither, well understood nor widely applied in practice. Unfortunately, as Fluitman laments, governments continue to invest their scare resources in pre-employment training in sectors that are not hiring. Fluitman stresses the need better to understand the realities of local labour markets. Labour market information systems are deficient in most developing countries. However, these countries cannot wait for adequate statistics before acting to redress labour market problems. Despite systemic weaknesses our hands are not empty. The intimate knowledge and good will of insiders, together with common sense can do much to substitute for missing or flawed data (Fluitman, 2001); they can be used to anticipate the skills and knowledge needs of the market. Planning strategically is dependent upon the ability to anticipate niche and sector demand – in terms of sector focus, resources needed and innovative implementation strategies.

The field surveys underpinning this chapter identified many strategies for anticipating demand for skills. In most cases they involved monitoring the demand for skills and knowledge in order to expand or reorient support interventions. Methodologies in common use include tracking the growth rates of specific sectors and tracer studies of those previously assisted (see Box 2.16, below). Innovative assessment mechanisms included using businesspeople as ‘key informants’ in order to measure the health of specific sectors. Other key informant groups included networks of young men and women with established enterprises in a given sector. Local industry leaders and associations are also useful sources of market insight (Chowdhury, 2001).

Most organisations will struggle to balance market-led proactive decision-making with the normal institutional tendency to “play it safe” (Chowdhury, 2001). The ability to respond quickly to market demands requires flexibility, a degree of decentralisation and suitable resources. The anecdotal evidence from the field surveys suggests that the larger and more consolidated the program the more difficulty it will have in responding quickly to or anticipating changes in sectors, niches and skills demands (Morales Gomez, 2001).

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