Youth Employment Skills (YES) Project Presentation by Minister Eugene Lenn Nagbe May 20, 2015 Ministry of Youth and Sports Republic of Liberia

Background  Liberia emerged from 14 years of civil war in  Delivery of basic social services such as health, water and sanitation and education facilities are limited in many parts.  Unemployment is a great challenge. Around 60% of the labor force is in vulnerable employment.  Youth constitute nearly half of the labor force and the largest number of the unemployed.

Addressing Youth Unemployment  Many youth in Liberia lack required skills to compete in the formal sector.  As a means of addressing unemployment among youth, Government embarked on the implementation of several income generating opportunities for youth including the YES project.  YES was launched in 2010 with funding from the World Bank.

YES PROJECT PROFILE  Implementing Agencies:  Ministry of Youth and Sports and  Liberia Agency for Community Empowerment (LACE)  Geographical Coverage:  All 15 counties of Liberia  PDO: expand access of poor and young Liberians to temporary employment programs and to improve youth employability, in support of the government of Liberia’s response to the employment crisis.

Program Components: Component 1: community works- implemented by the Liberia Agency for Community Empowerment (LACE).  This component ensures poor Liberian youth are engaged in temporary employment and receive life skills training. Component 2: Employment Through Skills Training- implemented by the Ministry of Youth and Sports through the Private Sector.  This component focuses on skills development for youth to make them employable.

COMPONENT TWO TARGETS  Skills Development- training of 4500 youth in various vocational areas such as agriculture, hospitality, road maintenance, tailoring, fashion design and food preservation  Job Placement- ensure job placement of 60% of trained youth.  TVET Institutional Development- support capacity building activities and institutional development for technical and vocational education training.  TRACER Study- conduct a tracer study of YES project graduates to ascertain their employment status and learn from their experiences.

IMPLEMENTATION STRATEGY Private sector engagement- Skills Development (training) and the Job Placement aspects were implement through the private sector (TRANSTEC, HIFAB, LEED, AOAV, & VOSIEDA). MYS in collaboration with training agencies negotiated with private concession companies (Western Cluster, Golden Velorium, Sime Darby) prior to the inception of training for the placement of trained youth.

ACHIEVEMENTS YES Skills for Job (MYS )  Trained 2,088 youth in various vocational areas  Ensured job placements for 1,337 trained youth  Conducted Tracer Study of YES project graduates and obtained information on their employment status  National TVET Policy developed, validated and submitted to cabinet for endorsement

TRACER STUDY KEY FINDINGS  The majority of the YES project graduates (54.6%) are trained in agriculture; 20% in road maintenance; 11.7% in hospitality services; 2% in food preservation; and 1% trained in tailoring.  About 51.1% of the YES project graduates are employed in agriculture; 29.2% are in self-employment; and 19.9% are in remunerative (wage) employment – higher than the overall labor force.  Of those employed, 72% are male and 27.9% are female.

MAJOR ISSUES IN IMPLEMENTATION  Two Agriculture Sector companies (Sime Darby & Golden Veloreum) were unable to employ many of the trained youth due to lack of access to additional land for activity expansion in their areas of operation (land conflict b/w locals and companies).  The outbreak of the Ebola Virus Disease in country adversely affected the job placement activities.

BEST PRACTICES  The skill developers (Skills trainers) must lead job placement of trained youth because, they have better relations with their trainees and rapport with potential employers.  Skills Development project contracts must be performance based; ie, payments must be tied to deliverables.  Vigorous Monitoring and Evaluation must be critical to performance based contracts

Youth trained in agriculture receive seeds and tools

Youth trained in Road Maintenance repairing feeder roads in Nimba County

END OF PRESENTATION THANK YOU