Effect of Youth in Action on Work Readiness and Socioeconomic Outcomes: Findings from Malawi

About 89 million youth between the ages of 12-24 are part of a growing cohort of out-of-school youth, approximately half of whom live in Sub-Saharan Africa. While many of these youth aspire to be active members of their community, many out-of-school rural youth face limited formal socioeconomic opportunities, and are often unable to access systems and structures to help their aspirations.

The situation is especially true for Malawi. Malawi is home to a young population; two-thirds of the population is under 25 years and 40% of the youth population between 15-24 years is unemployed.

In response to the high rate of youth unemployment, the Youth in Action (YiA) program was implemented by Save the Children in partnership with Mastercard Foundation. The goal of YiA is to improve the socioeconomic status of around 40,000 out-of-school young people (12-18 years), both girls and boys, in rural Burkina Faso, Egypt, Ethiopia, Malawi, and Uganda.

The Program Outcome Study (POS) was designed to understand how youth work readiness (financial literacy, work support and resources, academic skills and transferable skills) might change for a sample of youth over the program period, and how those changes might impact socioeconomic outcomes (income earning status, adequate savings, credit access). It was designed as a pre-post study with no control or comparison group.