YOUTH EMPLOYMENT (Fiscal Year 2018 Internal Strategy)

Our Goal: Young people everywhere have access to safe, decent, and equitable work.

Our Vision: By 2020, all Mercy Corps country teams will use M4Y approaches to enable access to safe, decent, and
equitable jobs for 15-24 year olds.

Who We Engage: Our youth employment programs support young males and females ages 15 -24 who are currently
unemployed or underemployed. When young people who are not legally able to work due to age or legal status, Mercy
Corps prepares them for their eventual transition to the workforce. For those who are legally able to work, Mercy Corps
promotes gender and age appropriate income opportunities in both the formal and informal economies that are safe,
decent, and equitable.
YOUTH EMPLOYMENT AT MERCY CORPS:
Our Theory of Change: If job creation occurs alongside building A SNAPSHOT
transferable and market-driven technical skills within a Our portfolio: $140M USD
supportive enabling environment, young people are more likely Our footprint: Group 1 / Afghanistan, DRC, Iraq,
to secure safe, decent, and equitable employment. Mali, Nigeria, Palestine, Somalia, South Sudan, Syria,
Yemen; Others / Colombia, Ethiopia, Greece, Haiti,
Strategic Areas of Focus for FY2018 India, Jordan, Kenya, Lebanon, Liberia, Myanmar,
Nepal, Timor-Leste, Tunisia, Uganda
1. Making Markets Work for Youth (M4Y) Funders: Google.org, Coca-Cola Africa Foundation,
MasterCard Foundation, Nike Foundation, USAID,
Through Mercy Corps’ deep knowledge and experience in the
DFID, GAC, SIDA, and others.
youth sector, we know it is not as easy as simply taking our
standard Market Systems Development (MSD) or Making
Markets Work for the Poor (M4P) approach as-is and applying it to a youth population in order to alleviate poverty and
increase employment outcomes. Male and female youth have unique constraints in accessing jobs, ensuring their voices
are heard, gaining leadership positions, building social capital, pursuing education and breaking through market barriers.
Whether the sector is agriculture or construction, our youth employment and entrepreneurship programs take a Making
Markets Work for Youth (M4Y) lens to ensure that we are equipping young people with the right skills and opportunities,
and unlocking constraints (such as access to financial services) within the wider systems. We strive to make labor market
systems work more efficiently and effectively for young people. Beyond focusing on basic supply and demand, we also
address the enabling environment and the informal norms that influence labor market participation for youth. The
systems approach to youth employment is our distinctive; we are recognized externally by donors and peers for these
models. Our goal for FY2018 is to ensure that all field teams are familiar with the approach and its application.

FY18 Recommendations:
 Support and implement the East and Southern Africa Regional Youth Employment Strategy (January 2017), Youth &
Agriculture: Opportunities for Impact (June 2017), and application of M4Y throughout the ESA region.
 Develop learning and influence agenda for M4Y approach including case studies and best practices.
 Adapt strategy process for Middle East region in coordination with ME Regional TSU.

2. Youth Employment in Fragile Contexts

Mercy Corps is committed to ensuring young people in the world’s most difficult contexts have access to safe, decent,
and equitable work. In places such as Syria, Afghanistan, Gaza, and others, we have demonstrated that effective youth
employment programs are not only possible, but also can be implemented thoughtfully, intentionally, and using M4Y
principles. Our approaches recognize the unpredictability of these environments and adapt to their unique, complex
characteristics: high informality of work, short-term nature of income opportunities, extreme competition for limited
work opportunities (particularly in contexts with high numbers of displaced, migrants, and refugees), importance of
social capital and trust in securing work, etc. In FY18, we will continue this commitment to enabling young people to
access work in fragile and conflict-affected states, study and document ‘what’s working’ as well as challenges, and will
position ourselves as an outspoken, proven leader in this space.

FY18 Recommendations:
 Work with larger TSU on strategies for developing employment initiatives on the spectrum from fragility to
resilience; work with Peace & Conflict team in understanding of links between youth employment and conflict.
 Develop comparison study on youth employment programs in Group 1 v Group 3 countries.
 Disseminate ‘Youth Employment in Fragile Contexts’ white paper (July 2017).
 Develop research study with South Sudan team, in coordination with the ESA strategy, on how we begin to lay the
groundwork during a crisis for emergency programs to eventually pivot to development work. The paper will
articulate how Cash for Work, or similar humanitarian interventions, can transition into long-term employment.
 Publish case studies on how our adaptive designs have enabled employment interventions (Gaza PCAP, Syria
portfolio, etc.) to pivot during times of crisis.

3. Demand-side Job Creation

Traditional employment programs often work to increase income through supply side interventions: by building skills
through vocational training, strengthening life/transferable skills, etc. However, this supply-side approach is often not
synced with the needs of the market and often overlooks the fact that the primary constraint is a lack of appropriate,
available jobs. Even a sophisticated, highly-educated population will struggle to find work if appropriate jobs simply do
not exist. Therefore, Mercy Corps recognizes that the most powerful and impactful intervention in increasing
employment opportunities is often demand-side job creation, via strengthening of small and medium-size enterprises
(SMEs). Creating new wage employment opportunities is a highly complex and time intensive endeavor, and one that
both developed and developing countries struggle with. However, we believe that SME strengthening and job creation
are critical to our overall success in employment programming, and we are not afraid to be bold in testing new solutions.

FY18 Recommendations:
 Disseminate agency Job Creation Strategy (July 2017).
 Develop private sector engagement methodologies, tools, and processes for working with SMEs towards the goal of
job creation, building on experiences of INTAJ, MicroMentor, PRIME, etc.

4. #jobs4youth Campaign
If we are to be transformational in this area, youth employment at Mercy Corps must exist as more than a key few
programs and more than one TSU member; rather, jobs for youth should be a movement that is supported, advocated
for, and celebrated across the agency. The #jobs4youth campaign will bring together key minds across diverse internal
and external teams to ensure that the youth employment movement at Mercy Corps is one that is adequately
strengthened, refined, resourced, and championed.

FY18 Recommendations:
 Explore opportunities for an agency-wide Youth Employment Innovation Fund, so that field teams can apply for pilot
funding to test new solutions to youth employment.
 Develop a quarterly #jobs4youth e-newsletter that highlights key programs (Impact Labs, YES, INVEST, PROSPECTS,
etc.), discusses current labor trends, stories from the field, etc.
 Establish #jobs4youth internal network of champions, with representation from field teams, MicroMentor, Social
Ventures, TSU (MERG, Y2G, Governance, Peace & Conflict, T4D, etc.), CFT, and a member of the Executive Team.
 Create a #jobs4youth Advisory Committee with key internal team members, along with identified corporate strategy
partners which may include Coca-Cola, Google, Unilever, Shell, Intel, Nike, etc.
 Develop a learning and influence agenda focused on 1) youth employment in fragile and conflict-affected contexts
and 2) youth employment on the spectrum from fragility to resilience.

Resources Required For FY18 Strategic Plan:

 Create new FTE for (demand-side focused) SME Advisor, MERG TSU; Shift (supply-side focused) Youth Employment
Advisor to Y2G TSU.
 Establish and utilize a roster of tested, deployable consultants and experts in the youth employment.

Tara Noronha, Senior Youth Employment Advisor