This guide supplements USAID’s Cost Reporting Guidance for USAID-Funded Education Activities with Annexes, and Cost Reporting - Field Guide, by illustrating their application to USAID’s cross-sectoral positive youth development (PYD) programming.

Purpose and Audience
Information about the costs of developing and implementing Positive Youth Development (PYD) interventions is essential for sustaining and scaling up successful interventions and for informing decision-making by USAID and stakeholders. The systematic, routine measurement of costs of PYD programs increases transparency around cost drivers in order to improve sustainability and overall value for money of USAID investments. Applying USAID’s cost measurement guidance to PYD programs enables Missions and implementers to understand costs of specific interventions associated with different PYD domains (i.e., assets, agency, contribution, and enabling environment) and features (e.g., skill-building, healthy relationships, safe spaces, youth engagement). Comparative cost-efficiency and cost-effectiveness analyses across programs and contexts can help Missions and implementers understand the value-added of different components of youth programs from individual skill-level interventions to the institutional- and systems-level interventions, as well as have a deeper insight into contextual and intervention-specific cost drivers.
This guide is designed to accompany USAID’s existing guidance on cost data collection1 by illustrating its application to PYD programs. It is best used as an introductory document, to gain a basic understanding of USAID’s cost measurement approach in the education sector and its application to PYD programming. The step-by-step directions and templates for cost reporting can be found in USAID’s guidance on cost reporting.
USAID Missions and implementing partners are the primary audience for this document. Secondary audiences include researchers and academics, youth-serving organizations, partner governments, and other stakeholders involved in developing and delivering PYD programs.