YouthPower Annual Learning Network Meeting: Lightning Talks, Round Tables and Poster Gallery
This guide lists the Lightning Talks, Round Table sessions and Posters taking place in the afternoon of the YouthPower Annual Learning Network Meeting. Pages 1 and 2 provide a quick overview, and pages 3–13 provide the session descriptions. The Lightning Talks provide a quick preview of some of the Round Table sessions. Each Round Table session will be repeated twice. Each participant can select and attend four 20-minute Round Table sessions, or walk through the Poster Gallery during one of these sessions.
Lightning Talks: (Access Slides and Recordings)
Accelerating Youth Impact through Data
IREX
Facilitator(s): Samhir Vasdev, Digital Development Advisor; Rachel Surkin, Director, Youth Practice
Description: How might we equip tomorrow’s leaders with the skills, confidence, and tools they need to make data-driven, evidence-based decisions? How can youth be the protagonists in the “data revolution” that can drive sustainable development in their communities? Join IREX as we share a new and creative model that’s developing a network of youth data ambassadors who demand, generate, and leverage high-quality information to measure and amplify their everyday impact. We’ll be grateful for your feedback and ideas to build on this model, and we’ll also introduce a few fun and interactive exercises to explore and cultivate a culture of data within our own communities.
Download the handout here:
Accelerating Youth Impact Through Data – hand-out (IREX).pdf
Beyond Youth Engagement: Youth as Protagonists in Education and Workforce Development with Vulnerable Youth
International Youth Foundation (IYF)
Facilitator(s): Amanda Ortega, Program Manager, Latin America & the Caribbean; Sergio J. Lopez, Operations Manager for Latin America & the Caribbean
Description: In many PYD programs, youth are engaged in consultative roles, in youth-led research, or other meaningful ways that lead to youth agency and contribution. However, youth engagement activities are often viewed as components of an adult-led program rather than its central theory, especially in workforce development programs.
This session will explore the youth-to-youth approach used in the Órale: Orienting Youth to the World of Work program, where young people lead as trainers, mentors, and job placement counselors to reconnect disconnected and NEET youth populations. Implemented for six years in Mexico, the program has achieved 71% (on average) employment or re-enrollment in education rate among participating youth. Learn how the youth-to-youth approach impacted both young people enrolled in the program and those delivering it; explore challenges in transferring a youth-led training program to local entities; and hear lessons learned from working with young people in these roles to foster successful outcomes.
Breaking the Boredom: Interactive M&E.
International Republican Institute (IRI)
Facilitator(s): Theodore Wilhite, Governance Coordinator
Description: Content in the 21st Century is no longer one-directional. Users don't just watch videos: they interact, share, like and comment. Why should M&E be any different? At IRI's latest Global Summit, using Google forms and google docs, we developed interactive prompts for participants to grow and evolve their ideas as well as evaluate the trainings and module sessions. This session explores how to generate more wholesome feedback from youth or other technologically-savvy participants.
Collective Impact to Transform Urban Violence and Marginalization in Sri Lanka and Nigeria.
Search for Common Ground
Facilitator(s): Rachel Taza, Children & Youth Program Coordinator
Description: The traditional NGO project model isn’t adding up to large-scale change on complex social issues. At the same time, formal civil society is not effectively engaging young people and their unprecedented potential for driving change.
Search for Common Ground is piloting a nonlinear, innovative approach for engaging young people in cross-sector collective action for systems change. Our pilots in Sri Lanka and Nigeria are aimed at addressing violence and marginalization in urban settings.
Combatting Participation in Violent Extremism: The Importance of Holistic Approaches.
Education Development Center
Facilitator(s): Kevin Corbin, Project Director
Description: EDC’s Mindanao Youth for Development (MYDev) project—which takes a PYD approach in providing soft and technical skills training to out-of-school youth (OSY) while supporting local community groups that work for the advancement of OSY—is no stranger to conflict, crisis, and even violent extremism.
Impact evaluation data suggest that combined interventions for MYDev youth beneficiaries may affect youth’s success in employment, civic engagement or resisting engagement with violent extremist groups better than single or isolated approaches. This integrated approach—where youth’s assets are developed, their perceptions of agency altered, their resilience strengthened, their community engagement deepened, and their alliances with adult advocates built—allows for greater success in conflict and crisis settings.
Putting Youth FP INFOcus through Digital Storytelling.
Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs
Facilitator(s): Cori Fordham, Program Officer
Description: The FP INFOcus Guide is a new tool by the Health Communication Capacity Collaborative, which encourages youth-led organizations to create short videos featuring authentic voices and perspectives about family planning (FP) from their own communities – all using their mobile phones. It includes a step-by-step approach to preparing, producing and promoting mobile phone videos that share FP information and model essential skills. By using the Guide, young video-makers improve their skills in digital storytelling and health promotion, and viewers can privately learn about their full-range of FP options. The Guide was tested with a youth-focused Nigerian organization, the HACEY Health Initiative.
Soft Skills Measurement Instrument.
YouthPower Action
Facilitator(s): Laura Lippman, Senior Technical Advisor
Description: YouthPower Action has developed an instrument to measure soft skills that builds on the recent review of existing instruments. The instrument will be piloted in FY 18. We will share the current version of the instrument with participants. Many youth programs include soft skills and the lack of good measurement tools has been a challenge for practitioners and policymakers.
The Business Challenge: Learning Business by Doing Business.
Making Cents International
Facilitator(s): Hillary Proctor, Director, Technical Services; Anne Greteman, Manager, Technical Services
Description: It has been tested and proven time and time again, youth learn and engage best by doing. In Liberia and Guyana, Making Cents has built on key PYD domains by integrating a Business Challenges into youth livelihoods programs to engage youth in their own learning and allow them to apply their learning in their community and marketplace. The Business Challenge provides youth with an experience of moving out of the classroom setting to managing an actual business for a day or week, where they negotiate with customers, plan business activities, and engage their budding skills and mindsets. This experience allows youth to employ their soft skills, work with peers, receive coaching and support, engage with their community and experience the reward of money earned from their own enterprise.
Transforming Politics and Power through Youth-Led Community Organizing.
National Democratic Institute (NDI)
Facilitator(s): Lauren Kitz, Senior Program Officer for Citizen Participation and Inclusion; Rachel Mims, Program Officer for Youth Political Participation
Description: In order for young people to influence decisions affecting their welfare and future, they need to play an active role in civic and political life. NDI’s work seeks to remove barriers to youth participation by giving young people a political voice, opening civic space and strengthening accountability on their priority issues. NDI recently developed a theory of change for youth political participation derived from decades of experience working with young people globally. This session will explore the applicability of the theory through youth-led community organizing, an experiential process capable of achieving multiple dimensions of positive change.
Using Empowerment Lessons Videos to Promote Careers in STEM.
Career Girls
Facilitator(s): Linda Calhoun, Founder and Executive Producer
Description: Career Girls is a free, noncommercial, video-based career exploration and readiness resource featuring 500 diverse and accomplished women role models sharing career, educational and life advice to inspire girls to stay on track academically and dream big about their futures.
In addition to a library of 10,000+ videos and a practical “How do I do this” section for each career, there are Empowerment Lessons– short, fast-paced video compilations of diverse role models delivering powerful soundbites with real-world insights, advice, and encouragement on a topic or type of career. Each lesson includes downloadable curriculum to facilitate group discussion and in-depth learning.
Using Evidence to Advance Girl-Centered Programming.
Population Council
Facilitator(s): Miriam Temin, Project Director | Strengthening Capacity to Build Girls' Protective Assets; Sajeda Amin, Senior Associate
Description: Community-based group programs to promote adolescent girls’ positive development are expanding, but evidence on their effects is limited. This session will briefly summarize a hot-off-the-press review of ‘safe space-style’ programs, emphasizing what we have learned about their impact and design. We’ll discuss the implications of evidence for programming and research. Case studies will illustrate how Population Council is testing a theory of change for innovative girl-centered programs in Zambia (GirlsRead!, which uses e-readers to enhance girls’ learning and schooling) and in Bangladesh (BALIKA, working to reduce child marriage).
Round Tables:
1.8 Million Adolescents Need HIV Treatment: What Service-Delivery Models Work… and Why?
Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation
Facilitator(s) Cathrien Alons, Associate Director Technical Assistance Cosima Lenz, Technical Assistance and Sustainability Intern
Description: Innovative service delivery approaches that differentiate care to address the unique barriers faced by adolescents and young adults are essential to reversing the HIV epidemic in this population. EGPAF implements six core types of differentiated service delivery (DSD) for adolescent HIV treatment, serving over 60,000 patients in care across 11 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Designs range from appointment spacing, to family ART groups, to weekend clinics and psychosocial support, school-based ART clubs, teen PMTCT, and comprehensive youth centers.
This session will explain the decision-making process for designing DSD for adolescents living with HIV, while improving access to HIV, sexual, and reproductive health services for all youth ages 10-24. This session will also discuss the role and importance of the key cadres of lay and professional health providers, especially peers and young people living with HIV.
9 Steps for Unlocking the Power of Clubs
Peace Corps
Facilitator(s): Carl Triplehorn, Youth in Development Specialist; Monique Widyono, Gender Specialist
Description: Youth Clubs are a powerful and underused way to engage young people. To unlock this potential, Peace Corps’ Club Toolkit provides guidance and tools to enhance clubs’ quality and effectiveness. At the center of the Toolkit is a user friendly rubric that enables the user to review nine core elements and identify strategies for improvement. This unique tool focuses on club implementation and the life skills that youth develop as club members as they create Codes of Conduct, elect officials, and take on leadership roles. Case studies will be provided to illustrate Peace Corps model of using camps to enhance clubs.
Baseline Results of the Partnership with Youth Longitudinal Cohort Study in the West Bank
Social Impact
Facilitator(s): Andrew Epstein, Senior Education & Evaluation Technical Specialist Jade Lamb, Technical Specialist
Description: This presentation will outline the baseline results of a longitudinal cohort study completed in June, 2017 of youth ages 1825, who interact with 5 USAID-supported Youth Development Resource Centers that utilize a positive youth development approach. This is the first study of its kind on PYD, and examines employment, employability and self-efficacy, attitudes toward violence, community engagement, and attitudes about the future. The midline is scheduled for December, 2017, and endline for September, 2018.
Cross Sectoral Skills for Youth Community of Practice: Measuring Youth Competencies across Contexts and Next Year's Theme and Activities
YouthPower Learning, Cross-Sectoral Skills for Youth CoP
Facilitator(s): Shubha Jayaram, Cross-Sectoral Skills for Youth Community of Practice Co-Champion
Description: For the past two-and-a-half years, the Cross Sectoral Skills for Youth CoP has worked to build a better understanding of cross-sectoral skills, their role, and potential for impact on Positive Youth Development (PYD) programs. We’ve done so through member-knowledge and resource sharing, webinars, and original briefs to address pressing implementation and research challenges. Learn more about our latest brief: Measuring Youth Competencies Across Contexts: Lessons From Implementers on how to Adapt Soft Skills Measurement Tools.
Then, building on the accomplishments to date, we will be asking you (yes you!) what the key questions are that are still left unanswered regarding skills and PYD. What topics would you like to see us tackle in the coming year? Join the Cross Sectoral Skills round table and help advance the field by contributing your suggestions!
Empleando Futuros: Gender and Positive Youth Development
Banyan Global
Facilitator(s): Louis Alexander, Principal, Youth Practice, Liena Isaula, Gender and Social Inclusion Specialist
Description: Banyan Global has taken an innovative approach to integrating gender into its Workforce Development Activity (named Empleando Futuros) in Honduras. Our approach is founded on a dedication to gender and social inclusion at all levels of the project which has included the creation of a Gender Implementation Strategy that outlines clear goals, dedicated resources (human and financial), activities, and anticipated results. Our presentation will include a discussion of practical tools and approaches to the project’s innovative gender integration approach. We will share our training, tools and methodological approach and discuss lessons learned and new ways forward regarding the integration of gender into PYD programming.
Energizing Ghana’s Ag Sector with Youth-led Tech Entrepreneurship
DAI Global
Facilitator(s): Anand Varghese, Principal ICT Specialist, Dipika Chawla, Senior Analyst, Sustainable Business Group
Description: DAI Global designed and helps implement Kosmos Innovation Center Ghana. The project, funded by Kosmos Energy, helps young local entrepreneurs build technology-driven businesses that meet the needs of Ghana's agricultural sector. In this presentation, DAI Global staff will identify the keys to the program's success, as well as how the model can be replicated in other countries.
Gender and Positive Youth Development Community of Practice: Adolescents and Sexual Coercion and Next Year's Theme and Activities
YouthPower Learning, Gender and Positive Youth Development CoP
Facilitator(s): Chelsea Ricker, Gender and PYD Community of Practice Co-Champion, Chisina Kapungu, Gender and PYD Community of Practice
Co-Champion
Description: The Gender and PYD CoP seeks to support gender integration in Youth Power programming with the aim of more broadly promoting gender and PYD integration across development programming. In the past two and a half years the Gender and PYD CoP has striven to be a place where conversations can push the boundaries of what we know about gender integrated programming and to take on under-explored topics at the intersection of gender and PYD through in-person meetings, webinars, and co-development of technical briefs with our membership. We will be asking you to think more about what types of discussions, interactions, and products would entice you to join and take active part in the CoP, as well as to help define a learning agenda through discussion on where there remain under-explored or under-researched areas when it comes to Gender and PYD.
Learning Links: “The Uber of Learning”- Refining an Innovative Business Model that Empowers Literate Women to Earn Income as Literacy and Numeracy Tutors in Rural Liberia
The Kaizen Company
Facilitator(s): Roseline Tekeu, Program Manager, Dr. Kevin Wheeler, Managing Director
Description: Liberian girls who become pregnant drop out of school, fall behind academically, usually never return, and become trapped in a cycle of poverty. The Kaizen Company is piloting an innovative approach in rural Liberia that connects literate Liberian women with these at-risk girls to serve as tutor-mentors. Drawing from successful private sector collaborative consumption business models (e.g. Uber), and leveraging existing SMS and mobile money functionality present in Liberia, Kaizen is providing micro-incentives to both learners and tutor-mentors for demonstrated learning progress verified by SMS. We complement this incentive-based performance model with psychosocial support. This model will support 2,500 girls. 
The Kaizen Company - USAID Liberia Learning Links Project 10-05-2017.docx
Piloting an Integrated Model for SRH and Workforce Development
YouthPower Action
Facilitator(s): Diana Rutherford, Senior Research and Evaluation Specialist
Description: YouthPower Action will be conducting a study to understand the benefits of an integrated workforce development (WfD) and sexual and reproductive health (SRH) intervention, compared to an intervention that addresses one or both of these sectors (WfD and/or SRH) separately. Through this initiative, we will learn whether youth participating in the integrated intervention have better outcomes than those in the single-sector interventions, through an impact evaluation with randomization. We will also capture “how to” information to understand the processes, strategies and challenges of integrating two sectors. This study, which will be implemented alongside a grant to support elements of this integrated program, builds on recent research, “Assessment of Integrated Workforce Development and Sexual and Reproductive Health Interventions with Recommendations for the Future,” which developed a theory of change regarding effective programming for this type of cross-sectoral approach.
Programming Guidance for Youth Entrepreneurship Programs
YouthPower Action
Facilitator(s): Tommy Galloway, Technical Officer; Phil Psilos, FHI 360 Technical Director, Socio and Economic Development Group, Asia
Description: Entrepreneurship and self-employment are the only option for many youth in countries with large youth populations and limited opportunities for formal employment. Many youth programs support youth through livelihoods programs to help programs create a stable source of income to help youth create and grow successful enterprises. YouthPower Action reviewed data on youth entrepreneurship programs to create programming guidance for USAID. The round table will discuss major recommendations emerging from this effort.
Shifting the Mindset: From Instant Gratification to Agricultural Entrepreneur
Chemonics International
Facilitator(s): Tracy Shanks, Director, USAID Maximizing Agricultural Revenue and Key Enterprises in Targeted Sites (MARKETS) II Aiylu Samaila, Director of Agriculture Productivity, USAID Maximizing Agricultural Revenue and Key Enterprises in Targeted Sites (MARKETS) II
Description: Contrary to presiding assumptions, MARKETS II has established that youth are, indeed, interested in developing careers in agriculture – and in adopting new farming technologies, management and production practices. By working directly with youth, MARKETS II aimed to combat the expectation for quick returns and immediate results. By engaging youth in short-duration crop production, encouraging peer-to-peer mentorship, utilizing ICT for extension services, training youth in both marketable hard and soft skills, and linking to tertiary institutions and private sector markets, the lesson learned is that meeting youth where they are is essential in programmatic development.
The 2017 Global Youth Wellbeing Index
International Youth Foundation
Facilitator(s): Ritu Sharma, Director, Global Center for Gender and Youth, Principal Author, 2017 Global Youth Wellbeing Index; Lara Henneman, Manager, Corporate Programs
Description: The 2017 Global Youth Wellbeing Index assesses the state of youth wellbeing in 30 countries that represent almost 70% of the world’s youth. The Index creates a textured picture of the status of youth by combining objective data, such as youth unemployment rates, and the opinions of young people, such as how optimistically they feel about their economic future. Donors and countries can examine their youth portfolios based on the Index results and consider investments in areas needing attention. Young people can boost their agenda setting and advocacy with the data in the Index. Researchers can see gaps in data collection on youth. Corporate leaders can consider Index findings to inform their social investments in key countries.
Learn about the 2017 Index’s top 10 findings and examine the data in your particular area of interest.
The Komo Youth-Led Club Documentary Project: Creating Safe Spaces for Genuine Youth Voices
Komo Learning Centres
Facilitator(s): Matthew French, Executive Director
Description: With a grant from YouthPower Learning, the Komo Learning Centres Uganda Youth-Led Club was able to produce a video series focused on lessons learned from their first year of implementation. In this session, the director of the project will share a little bit about the series and screen a video clip illustrating the importance of creating a safe space for youth to share their ideas and opinions. We will then hold a round-table discussion about facilitating the expression of genuine youth voices.
Watch the videos here:
YLC Concept, Impacts, and Expectations; Recruitment and Club Structure; Community Needs Assessment, Activity Prioritization, and Decision-Making; Capacity Building through Trainings and Workshops; Activity Planning and Design; Activity Implementation and Evaluation; Gender and Age Issues; YLC Challenges, Solutions, and Benefits; and The Process Of Making the Video Series.
The YouthPower Learning Agenda: Advancing the Field of Positive Youth Development
YouthPower Learning
Facilitator(s): Chisina Kapungu, Senior Gender and Youth Specialist; Cassandra Jessee, Director
Description: YouthPower Learning will facilitate the development and application of a PYD Learning Agenda that will help USAID and the broader youth development community to address gaps in PYD in LMICs. The PYD Learning Agenda starts developing a set of priority thematic areas and sub-questions addressing the critical knowledge gaps on the impacts of PYD in LMICs, which will drive activities to answer the agenda’s questions. Join us for a brainstorming discussion to shape the learning agenda, and provide input on questions and thematic areas that will provide USAID and YouthPower overall with a strategic direction to advance the field of PYD.
Youth Compass: A Guide for Strengthening USAID Youth Activities
MSI, Inc.
Facilitator(s): Ramon Balestino, Technical Director & Youth Practice Area Leader
Description: The Youth Compass is a first-of-kind USAID tool that provides an analytical framework to assess a youth project in its early post-solicitation stage to: (1) strengthen interventions and approaches (e.g., positive youth development); (2) generate youth participation and ownership; and (3) increase the likelihood for success.
Youth Engagement Community of Practice: How to Pitch Youth Engagement and Next Year's Theme and Activities
YouthPower Learning, Youth Engagement CoP
Facilitator(s): Mike Sweigart, Youth Engagement Community of Practice Co-Champion; Christy Olenik, Youth Engagement Community of Practice Co-Champion
Description: Youth Engagement Community of Practice Co-Champions will share the CoP’s accomplishments from this year – the theme was ‘engaging youth in research and evaluation.’ Learn about the new brief: Making the Pitch for Youth Engagement. They will also lead a discussion on the planned theme for next year ‘focusing on diversity’ and how to include more marginalized youth in program design and implementation.
Youth Engagement Videos: Inspire, Influence, Inform
Restless Development
Facilitator(s): Lorraine Perricone-Dazzo, Partnerships Manager
Description: Restless Development will show case select videos on how to engage youth in development produced under the YouthPower Learning funded grant and facilitate discussion about the content and process of producing them - sharing lessons learned and important messages from the series.
Youth in Peace & Security Community of Practice: What Works in Peacebuilding and CVE/PVE and Next Year's Theme and Activities
YouthPower Learning, Youth in Peace & Security CoP
Facilitator(s): Jen Heeg, Youth in Peace & Security Community of Practice Co-Champion; Maria Brindlmayer, Youth in Peace & Security Community of Practice Co-Champion, and
Mike McCabe, Agency Youth Coordinator, USAID
Description: Learn more about our latest Youth in Peace and Security Community of Practice brief: Promising Practices in Engaging Youth in Peace and Security and PVE/CVE. For the past two-and-a-half years, the Youth in Peace and Security CoP has worked to build a better understanding of what works for youth programs in peacebuilding and CVE/PVE with a focus on Positive Youth Development (PYD). We’ve done so through member-knowledge and resource sharing, webinars, and original briefs to address pressing implementation and research challenges. Building on the accomplishments to date, we will also be asking you (yes you!) what key questions you would like the CoP to focus on over the coming year. What topics would you like to see us tackle? Join the Youth in Peace and Security round table and help advance the field by contributing your suggestions!
Youth-Led Research Methodology: Innovative and Tested Models
Restless Development
Facilitator(s): Roselyn Mugo, Researcher, Restless Development & MasterCard Foundation Youth Think Tank; Rachel Proefke, International Research Manager
Description: Youth-led research can provide a unique lens for development programming because young people are best equipped to understand the experience of other young people. However, it takes strong design and facilitation. We will share highlights of Restless Development's youth-led research methodology, including the key stages and how youth can lead at each stage. This will include the Youth Think Tank, an intensive model which is informing MasterCard Foundation's work, as well as other models of varying scope that can inform a program or practitioner's work. This methodology will be relevant for USAID as a strategy for providing contextual research to inform funding and partnership priorities, as well as for youth development practitioners who can integrate the methodology into their programming design, planning and review.
Poster Gallery:
AMAZE: Using Video to Provide Sexuality Education for Very Young Adolescents
Advocates for Youth
Presenter(s): Nicole Cheetham, International Youth Health and Rights Division Director
Description: AMAZE is groundbreaking initiative implemented through a collaboration of sexuality education experts, Advocates for Youth, Answer, and Youth Tech Health. AMAZE seeks to provide very young adolescents, their parents and educators with animated and often humorous videos about puberty, healthy relationships, consent and other important sexuality education topics. AMAZE relies on short videos to directly provide very young adolescents, who often lack age-appropriate information about sexuality, with a reliable source that is fun and educational. AMAZE also provides resources and materials to parents and teachers to build their comfort, knowledge and skill to more effectively engage very young adolescents with the age-appropriate, fact-based information they need at this critical time in their development.
Career Center Platform
FHI 360
Presenter(s): Bryanna Millis, Director of Workforce Development and Entrepreneurship
Description: We will present on the Career Centers Platform. This combines the development of brick and mortar Career Centers at universities and TVET centers around Morocco that are linked by ‘virtual’ online career center portal. It's in demand by the private sector because it is uniquely designed to give students, graduates, and workers a suite of tools to help them: (1) Have the information and tools to set realistic expectations about career pathways; (2) Develop employability and entrepreneurship skills to be dynamic, creative, and problem solving either as business owners or employees; (3) takes a playful and hands on approach that embeds learning in the participants; (4) is closely tied to the private sector needs and designed to evolve as those needs evolve.
Civic Engagement: A Missing Link in Workforce Development Programming?
World Learning
Presenter(s): Catherine Honeyman, Senior Youth Workforce Specialist; Christopher Iverson, Program Officer, World Learning
Rizwaan Akhtar, Manager, World Learning
Lisa George, Senior Program Officer, World Learning
Description: Young people who see themselves as agents of positive change--even at a small scale--have a different vision of the purpose of their education, their work, and even of the time they may spend as NEETs (not in education, employment, or training). World Learning will present our efforts around the world helping youth develop employability skills in the real-life laboratory of addressing their own communities' challenges. Highlighting specific examples from Algeria, Iraq, and Mexico, we argue that civic engagement is one of the key missing links in most workforce development programming.
Cross-Cutting Soft Skills: Youth’s Take on what Matters and how Much
Education Development Center
Presenter(s): Rebecca Povec Pagel, Monitoring and Evaluation Technical Associate
Description: Implementers and researchers alike agree that soft skills are important to positive outcomes across a range of sectors, but little research has been done to uncover how a youth’s own perspectives and ideals of soft skills might affect these outcomes. A recent YouthPower Learning-funded study of the soft skills valued by youth took this more innovative approach to understanding soft skills, implementing a soft skills assessment and engaging youth in taking photos of soft skills and in focus group discussions. Findings suggest that some important revisions to soft skill interventions may be beneficial. Come to hear what those findings are! Cross-Cutting Non-Cog Skills_Final Report_MakingCents revised 6-12-17.pdf
Engaging Youth in Agriculture Using TV/Radio Programming: Exploring the Potential for Changing Attitudes and Behavior with Mass Media Interventions
Africa Lead/DAI
Presenter(s): Shannon Sarbo, Monitoring, Evaluation, Learning Manager
Description: The Africa Lead ESA program recently launched two mass media activities designed to engage youth in agribusiness entrepreneurship. The first is a full length, high quality feature film called Kumekucha, which is part of a larger media campaign, including a 52-week radio series and two complementary films. The second activity is a reality TV show called Don’t Lose the Plot, which features four young farmers given one acre of land each and nine months to turn them into successful farms to win an agricultural investment worth $10,000. The farmers receive guidance and practical insights from agriculture experts on financial planning, planting strategies, agricultural inputs and marketing. This solution is particularly relevant for development practitioners working in youth employment and empowerment activities, particularly in agriculture.
Findings from a Systematic Review on PYD Programs in Low and Middle Income Countries: What Works?
YouthPower Learning
Presenter(s): Chisina Kapungu, Senior Gender and Youth Advisor
Description: USAID commissioned the YouthPower Learning project to undertake a systematic review to synthesize what is known in the literature about PYD in LMIC and identify the gaps to inform future research. The review examines 97 programs in 60 LMIC countries to draw lessons about what works for cross-sectoral, PYD programming. This poster session will share the newly released infographic series that captures what is PYD and what we have learned about PYD programs drawing on the evidence from programs across sectors - HIV/AIDS, SRH, workforce development and democracy and governance. Come get your own copy of the infographics and talk with the authors.
Positive Youth Development in Low and Middle-Income Countries: Why Is It Important for Better Youth Outcomes, and how Do We Measure It?
YouthPower Learning
Presenter(s): Laura Hinson, Social and Behavioral Scientist
Description: This poster session will provide an overview the PYD measurement framework from the PYD Measurement Toolkit.. During the session, the facilitator will specifically share the PYD Measurement Framework, which is comprised of four domains, along with the relevant constructs, indicators, and indicator sources for PYD. This toolkit is a key resources for implementers and researchers which and provides guidance for measuring PYD in implementers' monitoring and evaluation of youth programs.
Soil-Mates: The Down and Dirt(y) on Connecting Eligible Agricultural Opportunities and the Youth who Totally Dig’em
YouthPower Learning
Presenter(s): Hillary Proctor, Director of Technical Services, Making Cents International; Eliza Chard, Manager of Technical Services, Making Cents International
Description: Youth and economic opportunities in the agriculture sector can be a match made in heaven -- but only if they find the right fit! This poster session will overview how implementers and funders can become skilled youth and agriculture ‘match makers.’ Come by and learn about the process of matching youth sub-groups with agriculture opportunities and discuss the PYD-informed tools which can support the process.
Treasures on YouthPower.org: What You May Not Yet Know about Youthpower.org
YouthPower Learning
Presenter(s): Christina Zola, Communications Manager; Maria Brindlmayer, Senior Knowledge Management Specialist, YouthPower Learning; Itena Hoxhallari, Atlas Fellow at Making Cents International
Description: Explore how YouthPower and other youth development related resources and information can be leveraged at every stage of the program life cycle, and how best to find key resources, such as YouthPower implementation projects information, past YouthPower learning webinars, key YouthPower Learning resources and toolkits. Participants can also ask questions about the site and its resources and learn how they can contribute to YouthPower.org.
Youth Engagement Training
Restless Development
Presenter(s): Jean Manney, Restless Development USA Director
Description: We will showcase the youth engagement training resource developed and delivered to DREAMS IPs and USG staff highlighting our experience designing and delivering it. This would be relevant for any YouthPower and other youth development partners who want to learn the reasoning and process behind engaging young people in their development programming.
Watch the video series here.