Why
Studies show that young people want to start businesses, yet the established business rate among adults is substantially higher than it is for youth. This implies that young people face higher barriers to entrepreneurship than adults, and there is a need for better policies aimed at enabling young entrepreneurs to realize their ambitions. Youth-led enterprises also primarily employ their peers, which could potentially catalyze more quality job creation in an enabling environment.
What
Decent Jobs for Youth focuses on supporting the development of policies, regulations and institutions that enable and encourage the creation of youth-led enterprises. To tackle weak skills and knowledge transfer, it is crucial to foster peer-to-peer support networks. Improving access to adequate information, training, finance and technology can help lift many of the obstacles that prevent young people from succeeding in business.
Who
The ILO, ITC, UNCDF, UNCTAD and UNIDO lead on this thematic priority. Decent Jobs for Youth brings together a growing number of partners who are committed to unleashing the potential of youth entrepreneurship and self-employment through fostering enabling environments and improving access to productive assets.
Capacity Building, Research and Policy Engagement
The overall objective of PEP’s commitment is to support and increase evidence-based policy making in nine African countries. The immediate objective is to develop the capacity of local experts to produce a reliable evidence base on youth employment issues, while engaging with policy to ensure uptake in decision and advisory processes. PEP will support local researchers to carry out contextualized research and policy engagement activities through nine projects supported by PEP’s current core donors: DFID, IDRC and Hewlett Foundation. The commitment will run for three years from January 2020 to December 2022.
National Green Youth Forums
OIJ commits to organize 5 National Youth Forums in IberoAmerica countries in 2019 with the participation of approximately 250 young people. The National Youth Forums led by the Alliance ILO-OIJ, promote the conversations and participation of young people and social actors to identify challenges and strategies to strengthen youth employment in relation to green jobs. The outcomes, in the form of national and/or regional reports are presented within the framework of the Climate Change Conference COP25, to nourish the implementation of public policies.