Ninaweza Youth Empowerment
Overview
The Kenya Youth Empowerment Program also known as Ninaweza was a 24-month youth employability program launched in 2011. It was funded by the World Bank and Microsoft, coordinated by the International Youth Foundation and implemented by the African Centre for Women, Information and Communications Technology. The program targeted young women aged 18-35 years who have completed high school, have been out of school for at least one year, are unemployed, and are living in the informal settlements around Nairobi. The purpose of the program was to improve the earning capacity of young women.
It provided young women with technical training in information and communications technology (ICT), training in life skills, work experience through internships, and job placement support. The ICT training was focused on computer hardware and software, entrepreneurship, and business process outsourcing. The life skills component addressed areas such as self-awareness, emotional intelligence, problem-solving, goal setting, job searching and health practices. The training lasted for eight (8) weeks after which the women entered an eight (8) week internship followed by six (6) months of job placement support.
Results achieved
Impact evaluation of the program supported by the World Bank and the International Youth Foundation revealed:
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Beneficiaries who received ICT and life skills training, along with internship and job placement support, gained 17.3 percentage points more knowledge in ICT than those who did not receive the intervention.
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Beneficiaries who received ICT training, internship, and job placement support (without life skills training) gained 15.8 percentage points more knowledge in ICT than those who did not benefit from the program
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The likelihood of obtaining a job was 14% higher for those who received the intervention compared to those who did not participate in the program.
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Beneficiaries were more likely to hold full-time employment, while non-beneficiaries were more likely to work as casual laborers.
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Weekly income of beneficiaries who received the full package (ICT and life skills training, internship, and job placement support) was $5.17 higher than those in the control group.
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Weekly income of beneficiaries who received all interventions except life skills training was $5.88 higher than those who did not participate in the program.
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The program bolstered the confidence of young women, with beneficiaries being 1.4 times more likely to be confident at the end than those in the control group
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Job matching improved, with beneficiaries being four times more likely to work in the ICT sector compared to those who did not receive the interventions. programme. The Ninaweza program also bolstered the confidence of the young women
Moving Forward: Safe guarding measures such as childcare and travel stipends can be vital to youth participation, especially if the young people are from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Replicability
One of the factors that led to the success of the Ninaweza project is that prior to the training and to ensure that the technical training responds to the market demands, the project implementing organization conducted a study to assess the needs of the local industry. This meant that the training was developed with full knowledge of the training gap to be addressed. This is an important lesson and a core area of learning and replicability. As part of the replicability mechanisms, it is important that counselling is integrated in the life skills training to improve the attitudes of the beneficiaries towards work. It is also important that mechanisms be put in place to remove the culture of invulnerability so as to reduce crave for handouts. Replicating organizations should also consider increasing the duration of training so that the young women can spend more time on their training before transiting them to an internship. Also, life skills training might have provided advantages that helped participants to obtain more desirable jobs.
