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This is the Decent Jobs for Youth Blog Series: Youth Rights & Voices. The Blog Series highlights the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on young women and men in the world of work and discusses action-oriented policy responses and solutions. A platform to share emerging analysis, knowledge and country-level evidence, the blog series features contributions of youth representatives, youth employment experts and Decent Jobs for Youth partners. If you would like to comment or contribute, please contact decentjobsforyouth@ilo.org.

Showing 36 blog items

16 December 2020

Leaving No One Behind: Young People are Central to LDCs’ Employment Recovery

Youth unemployment and underemployment were already major and growing concerns in the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) prior to the onset of the pandemic; not least because peop...

07 December 2020

How big is the youth aspirations gap? (spoiler alert, it’s huge…)

Ever since the famous study by Kurt Lewin in 1936[1], scientists have been studying the concept of aspirations and how they affect an in...

03 December 2020

Adapt to challenges that come your way – the story of Krishneer Sen

Krishneer Sen is originally from Korotogo village, located in the beautiful coral coast of Fiji. To gain a better education and work opportunities, he moved to the Capit...

18 November 2020

Six lessons in creating decent work through Start-ups and Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs)

Oxfam, with support from the Danish Arab Partnership Program (DAPP), is implementing the five-year Y...

04 November 2020

Youth-Led Entrepreneurship: Driving Micro-Movements for Change

Unemployment is one of the biggest challenges of an uncertain, post-pandemic future. Nowhere are these issues graver than within the demographic of young people, with already hi...

15 October 2020

Education data in sub-Saharan Africa is critical to facilitate youth access to decent jobs

Education data in sub-Saharan Africa: what do we know? In the last few years, access to education data[1] has b...

07 October 2020

Tackling Youth Vulnerabilities in the Macedonian Labour Market

Youth employment in North Macedonia has faced challenges since the beginning of the economic transition and the establishment of the country in 1991. The unemployment rate of yo...

16 September 2020

Build Back Better means Build Back Fairer: Bringing gender equality to the core of employment recovery

The COVID 19 crisis has laid bare the entrenched gender inequalities that, compounded with other inequalities, plague labour markets. As the latest

09 September 2020

Decent Work for a Decent Life: The Youth Agenda in Times of Uncertainty

The COVID-19 crisis is systemically, deeply and disproportionately impacting the lives of young people: particularly young women, yo...

27 August 2020

Supporting youth-led community-based COVID-19 solutions in Kenya

Kennedy is only 25 years. As a first born in a family of seven, he started working at the age of 16 years to support his parents in providing for the family. Kennedy’s par...

21 August 2020

Youth-led Emergency Response in Kenya's Informal Settlements

As of the writing of this article there are more than 30,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Kenya. A limited testing capacity means that the real number of cases is likely much...

12 August 2020

Private Sector Response: The Time is Now

We are living in unprecedented times. The Coronavirus pandemic has rapidly triggered a deep economic and social crisis; likely the worst in modern times. Young people are being...

16 July 2020

Meet Bashiru Mansaray: A young tech-preneur using his graphic design skills to address COVID-19

05 August 2020

Youth in the Health and Social Care Sector: at the front-lines of the COVID-19 Response

The novel coronavirus pandemic has affected individuals around the wo...

29 July 2020

Boosting youth entrepreneurship through informal credit in Benin

Entrepreneurship is an important driver of economic growth and innovation in developing countries. In particular, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are labour intensive,...

22 July 2020

Now, more than ever: Youth social entrepreneurship and responses to the COVID-19 pandemic

Very early during the COVID-19 pandemic, young people demonstrated their ingenuity and solidarity by helping at-risk community members such as older persons or persons with medi...

15 July 2020

Post-COVID policy responses in Africa: why robust data is key

In Africa, the COVID-19 pandemic has am...

08 July 2020

Indigenous youth and the COVID-19 crisis: between deepening inequalities and strengthening community-based responses

Beyond a global health crisis, the Covid-19 pandemic is reinforcing pre-existing socio-economic inequalities. Facing historical marginalization -in both developing and developed...

02 July 2020

Supporting Youth Leadership: Why we must recognize young people as agents of change

“If the children aren’t active, positive leaders and know that they have to demand their rights while they are young, they will not be active and innovat...

25 June 2020

Countering COVID-19– Four ways young social entrepreneurs are shaping community resilience

We are all living through an unprecedented global crisis. Overcoming COVID-19 is a challenge that requires everyone across the world to play their part. Many of the young social...

18 June 2020

Entrepreneurial Minds, Resilient Spirits: How Refugee entrepreneurs are facing COVID-19

“In its economic and social impact, this virus picks out the most vulnerable and the least protected, and it hits them the hardest”. Guy Ryder, Director Gen...

15 June 2020

Adapting to the new COVID-19 reality: the Buzinezzclub and Werkclub

The coronavirus pandemic has a devastating impact on people and economies around the world. The Netherlands is no different: the virus has heavily hit the country and the effect...

10 June 2020

Empowering young digital entrepreneurs during COVID-19: A gamechanger for the future

The worldwide lockdowns and the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic have forced many small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to reinvent their business models to continue oper...

05 June 2020

Ye! Community: Innovation, hope and the future - A young Nigerian redefines innovation during COVID-19

The promise Adeloye Olranrewaju, fondly called Lanre, is a young Nigerian entrepreneur. The 27-year-old inspires everyone with his dynamism an...

28 May 2020

Let’s act to prevent long-term youth labour market exclusion and scarring  

Almost to the day one year ago, the Global Initiative on Decent Jobs for Youth brought together youth employment representatives and experts during its annual conference in Rome...

20 May 2020

Young people at the heart of the (post)Covid-19 response

‘After several years of hard work, I could finally see my work bear fruits. Because of the virus, we had to stop everything. I hope that my start-up will survive this...

14 May 2020

Keeping the food value chain alive: challenges and solutions of young agripreneurs

“This pandemic has affected me so much, it has given me a very hard time. I had six workers around, but I had to stop them from working because I can’t pay them....

12 May 2020

A New Dawn for MSMEs and Startups

Things can change quickly in life. The security of one moment can quickly become impermanent before we have a chance to realize it. This is certainly the case with the crisis th...

08 May 2020

Testimonies from young people: Anxious yet hopeful about life after the pandemic

More than a decade after the global financial crisis sent youth unemployment rates soaring to an all-time high, a generation of young people once more look to a future filled wi...

07 May 2020

Normal is the problem.

I have an unpopular opinion: COVID-19 isn’t the problem. It is a problem, a grave one no doubt, but it is exposing – not causing – all of the o...

05 May 2020

Derecho a la información en tiempos del COVID-19 - Una clave para el ejercicio libre y tranquilo d

El derecho a la información es central para que las personas jóvenes ejerzan el conjunto de sus derechos y es, además, un derecho que se debe proteger. Es c...

30 April 2020

The Fine Print of COVID-19: Girls and young women bearing the brunt of the pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has ushered in one of the biggest global challenges of this generation. As countries intensify efforts to flatten the curve and contain the virus, it is cr...

29 April 2020

Youth volunteers help to turn the tide on coronavirus

Shortly after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, The Economist’s front page depicted the world with a “CLOSED” sign.  The coronavirus pandemic has ind...

24 April 2020

COVID-19 exacerbates the youth employment challenge in the Western Balkans

By now, it has become crystal clear that the health crisis caused by the rapid spread of COVID-19 very expeditiously has turned into an economic one. The economies of the Wester...

22 April 2020

Youth driving action against the pandemic in Nairobi’s Mathare slum

The COVID-19 pandemic is significantly affecting the world’s most vulnerable groups, including the one billion people living in informal settlements and slums worldwide. T...

15 April 2020

Young workers will be hit hard by COVID-19’s economic fallout

Crises fall hardest on the most vulnerable. Young people make up one such group, particularly when it comes to the social and economic impact of the virus pandemic....