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Adolescent Skills for Successful Transitions
Save the Children’s Adolescent Skills for Successful Transitions work provides adolescents and young people with relevant market-based skills and opportunities for obtaining decent work as well as agency and hope for their life-chances. Examples of interventions across the full spectrum include vocational training and business skills, apprenticeships, financial literacy, life skills, and building self-esteem and social networks.
The efforts are focused on the most deprived and at-risk adolescents; provision of both comprehensive training and follow-up mentoring services; and support specifically for marginalized, out-of-school young people with a combination of educational skills, including core literacy and numeracy, and entrepreneurial opportunities.
Market-relevant skills and knowledge, for adolescents who have suffered deprivations relating to poverty, should be combined with the fostering of “agency” - the building of competencies such as life skills and social networks as well as hope for a successful future, confidence and self-esteem. Agency may be fostered through participatory methods and active learning – by engaging adolescents in the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of programmes. Programmes should engage young people as innovators and agents of positive change, encouraging them to take responsibility for savings accounts or other resources and to participate actively in the community.
Save the Children has also found that partnerships with parents and local communities, as well as in some cases with corporate partners, are essential for ensuring the relevance and sustainability of programmes’ impact. Where possible, Save the Children will work with governments and other partners (such as labour unions, the ILO) to address local labour market policies and distortions that negatively affect the ability of young people to access decent work and employment opportunities.
Photo: CJ Clarke/Save the Children
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Youth Savings Patterns and Performance in Colombia, Ghana, Kenya, and Nepal: Key Findings
Research suggest that accumulating savings not only creates economic opportunity but also improves developmental outcomes, including school enrolment, academic achievement, and health. But the percentage of children aged 15 and 24 with formal savings rang
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Money Matters: Training young workers of tomorrow in Indonesia
Youth unemployment is increasingly linked to low skills and inadequate preparation for the labor market. Vocational training programs are an important tool for young people to invest in the skills they need to compete for jobs. These programs have led to
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A new global partnership: Eradicate poverty and transform economies through sustainable development. The Report of the High-Level Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post-2015 Development Agenda. Child-friendly version
We often hear the statement that ”children are the future” – but what if children themselves had the opportunity to say how they want to shape the world? The 2015 Millennium Development Goals (MDG) are coming to an end. The debate about what will replace
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Effects of the Palestinian National Cash Transfer Programme on Children and Adolescents: A mixed methods analysis
This publication is a product of the project: The impact of cash transfers on the rights and well-being of children in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. It presents findings from a mixed methods study of the effects of the Palestinian National Cash Tr
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Improving Income and Advancing Social Identity of Rural Adolescent Girls: Project Ending Report, Save the Children (Tanisha)
The issue of empowering adolescent girls remains a continuous struggle in the Bangladesh context. Adolescent girls in Bangladesh have high drop-out rates from school, poor health and often restricted mobility and inability to influence key decisions on ma
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Advancing Adolescence: Getting Syrian refugees and host-community adolescents back on track
The conflict in Syria and subsequent exodus of Syrians into neighboring countries has reached its fourth year. This report analyzes the impact on Syrian refugee and host-community children. A recent study by UNHCR has shown that adolescents are experienci
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Testing the Waters: YouthSave pilot results from three markets
YouthSave, a consortium initiative created in partnership with The MasterCard Foundation, was established in 2010 to investigate the potential of youth savings accounts as a tool for youth development and financial inclusion in developing countries. Guide