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.