Making Cents International and its partners for the YouthPower E&E IDIQ and YouthPower Learning Task Order bring more than 80 years of combined experience promoting positive youth outcomes in health, education, and political and economic empowerment programs.
Individually and as a team, we share a common commitment to PYD and engage youth in everything we do – from providing them a platform to generate and share knowledge, lessons learned, and best practices, to conducting participatory research, service design, and evaluations in partnership with youth.
For more information, please contact Dr. Christy Olenik, YouthPower E&E IDIQ Project Director and Vice President, Technical Services, Making Cents International.
Making Cents International
Making Cents International, a woman-owned small business (WOSB), brings expertise as a leading convener of youth development implementers, researchers, donors, and youth leaders to catalyze knowledge and actionable learning. We implement programs serving youth and capture and disseminate relevant and actionable knowledge on youth development issues drawn from multiple sectoral actors through continuous engagement with key stakeholders, including youth, governments, international donors, implementers, researchers, and the private sector. Making Cents International and its team of renowned research and implementing organizations will support USAID in becoming a leader in the development of the international evidence base for positive youth development (PYD) approaches.
Consortium Partners:
International Center for Research on Women (ICRW)
Founded in 1976, the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) is a private, nonprofit organization with a mission to empower women, advance gender equality and fight poverty in the developing world. Since its founding, ICRW has managed programs in nearly 70 countries worldwide. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., ICRW has offices in Nairobi, Kenya and in New Delhi and Mumbai, India. Our staff of more than 80 includes gender and youth specialists, behavioral scientists, public health specialists, demographers, monitoring and evaluation experts, economists, policy analysts, lawyers and other subject matter experts who combine academic expertise with extensive field experience. Across sectors and technical areas, a central element of our institutional approach is working in collaboration with partners at the local, regional and global levels to develop and build support for more efficient and effective programs.
Results for Development Institute (R4D)
Results for Development Institute (R4D) is a global nonprofit organization working with partners in more than 55 countries to find new ways to help people escape poverty and reach their full potential. We apply fresh thinking and rigor to emerging and stubborn development challenges — particularly within the fields of health, education and governance — and we pioneer and advance creative, high-impact solutions. We do this by conducting analysis that helps to inform and influence decision-makers; building platforms and networks that connect people and ideas; providing direct support to local change agents; and combining these approaches to deliver meaningful and lasting results.
Khulisa Management Services provides monitoring, evaluation, research and data quality assurance services to public and private sector partners worldwide with a strong focus on Africa. As a small professional services firm, we play a fundamental role in measuring development impact and facilitating partnerships between donors and governments. In the United States, we are certified by the US Small Business Administration (SBA). Khulisa actively works on youth development projects. For example, we are the lead M&E Advisor on the Youth Power Learning task order and have co-led several efforts in this regard, including producing an M&E Toolkit, contributing to the design of standard performance indicators for positive youth development and the design of a web-based database, plus providing assistance with the USAID Zambia Mission on an assessment of their youth strategies and programming. Examples of Khulisa’s youth work include the USAID Malawi EGRA evaluation and the Independent Cocoa Verification (ICVB) evaluation of certification activities in the West African Cocoa Sector conducted in Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire. Partnering in eliminating child labor projects in 5 Southern Africa countries and Tanzania, capacity building continues to be a common thread for many of Khulisa’s projects across health, education, agriculture and youth development and economic growth sectors.
For more information about Khulisa, please see our 2012-2014 corporate report.
University of Washington/Social Development Research Group
The Social Development Research Group (SDRG) is part of the University of Washington’s School of Social Work and is an internationally recognized, interdisciplinary team of researchers united in a common mission: to understand and promote positive social development in diverse populations by conducting research on factors that influence development; developing and testing the effectiveness of interventions; studying service systems and working to improve them; advocating for science-based solutions to health and behavior problems; and disseminating knowledge and expertise produced by our research. SDRG is guided by the Social Development Model, a developmental theory that guides discovery of predictors and most of the programs tested. SDRG work has guided federal and state agencies’ development of policy and practice in substance use and delinquency.
University of Melbourne/Center for Adolescent Health (UM/CAH)
The Centre for Adolescent Health is Australia’s academic leader in the health problems that affect adolescents and young adults. The vision of the Centre is ‘making the difference to young people’s health’ through ‘advancing adolescent health knowledge, practice and policy’. The Centre has a multidisciplinary research group who work within the Murdoch Childrens Research Institute, the University of Melbourne and the Royal Children’s Hospital. The Centre’s research addresses the major health problems that affect young people locally, nationally and globally. Our research studies aim to understand the causes and consequences of these health problems and design the best strategies for preventing and treating them. Ultimately we look to influence health care and health policy nationally and internationally. We address the health issues of adolescence and young adulthood, a life stage characterised by health problems related to emotion and emotional control (e.g. injury and mental health problems) Yet, there is often a gap between the health issues young people present with and the health issues they experience. We collaborate widely, utilise both qualitative and quantitative methods, and are multidisciplinary in orientation. The Centre also runs the highly regarded Masters in Adolescent Health and Wellfare through our postgraduate education program at the University of Melbourne. The Centre’s global work has included leading two series for the Lancet. Our group recently published a Lancet Commission in Adolescent Health and Well-being in partnership with groups including Columbia University, University of Washington, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, University College London and International Centre for Research on Women.
In Australia, we have undertaken internationally unique studies of the factors influencing health as children pass through puberty and how young people make the transition from school to getting a job, leaving home, and having a family of their own. These studies have moved on to the next generation, where they are exploring the influence of the health and wellbeing of parents prior to pregnancy on the healthy start to life for newborns. Our prevention studies have addressed questions about how schools and local neighbourhoods can become healthier and more nurturing places for adolescents. We have been particularly concerned with the health of young people who are socially marginalised including young indigenous people, young offenders and those who leave school early.
The Young Americas Business Trust (YABT)
The Young Americas Business Trust (YABT) is a nonprofit organization that works in cooperation with the Organization of American States (OAS) to promote social and economic development of young people around the world. While building entrepreneurial capacity and creating opportunities for future business leaders, the YABT community advances the global goals and strengthens youth-led initiatives for sustainable development. YABT has four focus areas to support youth ventures, especially those working on poverty reduction, employment, climate change, peace and democracy. YABT programs have a positive impact on all aspects of young people’s lives. Since its creation, it has bolstered more than 40,000 young people in 75 countries through programs and activities that permit young people to be productive members of their communities, opening a space so that they can act as partners contributing to the development of their countries and the region.
Examples of Consortium Partners' Work:
Knowledge Management Platform for Youth Economic Opportunities
Making Cents International has developed a demand-driven and global knowledge management platform that supports positive youth development in youth economic opportunity programs.
Improving the Reproductive Health of Married and Unmarried Youth in India
This ICRW report summarizes the results of a multi-partner study of youth reproductive health interventions in rural and urban areas of India from 1996 to 2006.
Innovative Secondary Education for Skills Development
R4D worked with regional partners in Africa and Asia to examine employer needs, explore existing curricula systems, and identify existing innovative skills delivery models under the Innovative Secondary Education for Skills Enhancement (ISESE) project.