Current News/Announcements
Conference Registration is Open!
You can now officially register for the 2013 Global Youth Economic Opportunities Conference to be held in Washington, DC, September 10-12. The 7th annual conference is the premier learning event for practitioners, funders, private sector companies, researchers, educators and youth leaders working to increase and improve economic opportunities for young people. Participants will share lessons learned, promising practices, and innovative ideas through technical workshops, engaging plenary sessions, and interactive networking.
The 2013 Global Youth Economic Opportunities Conference will contain a Spotlight on Rural Youth and a Spotlight on Technology. The learning agenda will focus significantly on these topic areas through the conference's five learning tracks.
How can we better link rural youth to promising, sustainable economic opportunities? Through the Spotlight on Rural Youth, join us in exploring what young people outside of urban centers need to succeed as entrepreneurs and employees.
The Spotlight on Technology has been brought back by popular demand as stakeholders within our field continue to seek concrete examples of how technology is being used effectively in programming, and how organizations are effectively supporting young people in their efforts to start a business or get a job in growth-oriented technology sectors.
The five learning tracks include:
- Youth Enterprise Development
- Youth Workforce Development
- Youth-Inclusive Financial Services Monitoring
- Evaluation and Impact Assessment
- Adolescent Girls and Young Women
Interested in being a sponsor of the conference? Looking to share your knowledge as one of our speakers? For more information on all the opportunities available to you and your organization, please contact conference@makingcents.com.
January 2013: Tackling Rural Youth Employment Challenges in MENA
Rural poverty is endemic in most of the MENA countries due to scarce natural resources, insufficient investment, and an unsuitable policy framework. The lack of economic opportunities for youth in rural areas is caused by a number of issues: inadequate training or mentoring resources, insufficient access to financial services, and traditions which favor government jobs over entrepreneurial pursuits among others. Governments and donors are trying to respond to these issues, but there remains few scaleable or sustainable models for helping rural youth to improve their livelihoods.
With support from the International Fund for Agricultural Development and in partnership with Silatech, Making Cents will begin to address these problems through the three-year, $6 million USD “Scaling-up IFAD rural youth employment interventions in the MENA region” project with local partners in Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen.
How will this project affect regional and global stakeholders? It will do this by developing sustainable and scaleable youth employment initiatives that can be expanded both in MENA and other regions of the world and by disseminating the learning from these initiatives.
January 2013: Youth Economic Opportunities Knowledge Portal
“How can we speed up the pace at which tools and best practices are shared and applied and partnerships are formed to better meet the diverse economic needs of today’s growing youth population?” Our answer to this question is the Youth Economic Opportunities portal, www.YouthEconomicOpportunities.org. This is the first knowledge exchange portal designed by and for the global youth economic opportunities sector, and dedicated to discussion and action around this important question. In September, 2012, Making Cents launched this portal and our goal is to support you to:
- Connect and share knowledge, experiences, and lessons learned
- Exchange the latest resources, jobs, and funding opportunities
- Impact the world’s 1.8 billion young people
In just three months, over 30 blogs and hundreds of the most relevant papers, case studies, and toolkits have been shared with 7,000 unique visitors from 169 countries.
Would you like to share your company's event or highlight the important work you are doing with the thousands of portal users? If so, please upload your organization’s latest research, tools, events, blogs, and other announcements here.