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

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. Youth in continental Africa and around the world have “aspirations and dreams of who they want to be, how they will contribute to their communities and the work they would like to do.” However, many out-of-school rural youth face limited formal socioeconomic opportunities, are often unable to access systems and structures (such as quality formal education or the formal economy) and lack foundational skills that could support them to pursue the futures they envisage for themselves. In rural contexts, many young people have significant responsibilities in their homes, family farms, or family businesses; they may also move in and out of different informal experiences and seek income from a variety of sources. However, many of these youth are unable to find pathways out of poverty or are unable to explore social and economic opportunities to realize their goals.

Youth in Action is a six-year programme implemented by Save the Children, in partnership with the MasterCard Foundation. The goal of the programme is to improve the socioeconomic status of around 40,000 out-of-school youth (12-18 years) in rural Burkina Faso, Egypt, Ethiopia, Malawi, and Uganda. The Theory of Change is to achieve this by enhancing youths’ work readiness skills (financial literacy, foundational literacy and numeracy, transferable skills, and work support), facilitating their action in livelihoods opportunities, and building key partnerships to remove barriers to youth’s participation in their economies and communities. In Uganda, the Youth in Action programme started in September 2012, with the target of realising the aspirations of 10,050 youth.