Findings Report on a Scaling Mechanism to Source, Vet and Register Workers to Lynk Platform
Lynk aims to create the ‘entrepreneurship infrastructure’ which enables informal workers- referred to as “pros”- to thrive through the provision of the key competencies that they traditionally lack – from customer service to marketing and financial management. With the support of the Global Center for Youth Employment (GCYE), Lynk set out to improve the way it sources, vets, trains and engages with pros. This report discusses the findings during each step of the pro recruitment cycle, how it adapted its processes to utilize its learnings, as well as what it hopes to learn and achieve at each step of the recruitment funnel.
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Initial Report on a Scaling Mechanism to Source, Vet and Register Workers to Lynk Platform
Lynk is a platform to connect blue collar professionals in Africa – mostly youth – to jobs. Lynk aims to facilitate thousands of jobs per day within a few years, and one of the bottlenecks to scale is the recruitment of quality professionals onto the platform. With the support of the Global Center for Youth Employment (GCYE), RTI International, and the Ford Foundation, Lynk is seeking to develop and validate an effective and scalable mechanism of sourcing, vetting/skill assessing and registering informal sector vocational workers – particularly youth – into the Lynk platform. This is the first of two reports to be produced by this project, which outlines what we’ve learned from our inception phase, and what we aim to do over the course of the project.
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Initial Research Paper on the Feasibility of Providing Digital Economic Identities to Youth
Making Cents International (Making Cents) has been supporting the delivery of financial services by microfinance institutions (MFIs) to Syrian refugees in Jordan and Lebanon through market research and technical assistance. However, flight risk remains a major concern and is limiting the degree to which microfinance institutions are willing to serve the Syrian market. To respond to this issue, Making Cents is currently implementing a proof-of-concept initiative to develop a “digital identity” on a distributed ledger (block chain) system for 500 Syrian refugees living in Jordan that could be used to communicate their credit history and incentivize repayment.
At our 2017 Ideathon in NYC, Making Cents was selected to extend this proof-of-concept to 250 economically active youth refugees, ages 18-25, living in Jordan. The resulting research project will assess the digital economic identity’s influence on youth’s access to and repayment of credit and youth’s hope for the future over the course of one year. As the first phase of the project, Making Cents conducted a short feasibility study in early November 2017 in order to assess the potential and verify demand for BanQu’s digital economic identity platform in Jordan among potential clients and stakeholders of the microfinance sector. Findings from this field research and an accompanying desk review are found in this report.
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Career Builders Toolkit
The Career Builders Toolkit is a guide for creating, evaluating, and/or enhancing career counseling and youth support programs in global workforce development. Developed through a recent Delphi study, supported by RTI and NC State University, the Toolkit provides empirically supported tools for program development and evaluation in collaborative career development and mental health capacity building efforts worldwide.
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Report: An Ecosystem Model for Credentialing Entrepreneurs
The Global Center, in collaboration with Acceleration Group, has developed a framework for qualifying young entrepreneurs and a digital platform for demonstrating entrepreneurial capability. This framework and platform are ecosystem-based, enabling youth to showcase their potential to those whose know-how, access, and resources they need to build their ventures and advance their careers. This adds a critical element often missing in local markets—a platform for engaging market stakeholders in assessing youth skill sets.
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Report: The Nexus of Microwork & Impact Sourcing
The Global Center for Youth Employment and its members Banyan Global and Future Work Consulting conducted a study of successful online outsourcing service providers to develop a comprehensive analysis, map current trends, challenges, and success factors surrounding the implementation of microwork. The report includes interviews with Microsoft, Pinterest, Ebay, Getty Images, Samasource, Digital Divide Data, Daiprom, Rockefeller Foundation, MasterCard Foundation among others, and insights from site visits to microwork centers in East Africa.
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BLOG: A Community Worthy of Continued Investment, August 2016
By Andrew Baird
“Community of Practice” is a term of art, not science. Many times these networks are deemed to exist, but are far from communal and not grounded in practice. In my career, I learned that you know a Community of Practice when you see one, even if it is sometimes hard to articulate why it’s one. While at Making Cents International in 2006, we knew we did not see such a community in the youth economic opportunities space…
Can Big Data Save Labor Market Information Systems?
The rise of private, real-time labor market information (LMI), such as web-based job posting analytics, social network inferences, crowdsourcing, and mobile phone polling, has garnered interest and questioned the dominance of traditional approaches. The LMI brief explores the use of real-time LMI and presents interviews conducted with international donor officials to gain their perspectives on its applicability in developing countries.
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Learning from Youth to Solve Youth Employment
Ruth’s dream of pursing a university degree and a career in journalism represents one from the millions of young people who, because of hardship or lack of opportunity, are unable to reach their full potential. The GCYE is one of the partners behind YouthVoices, a digital storytelling platform allowing young people, like Ruth, to share their stories globally in hopes of changing the perspectives of policymakers, compelling public action and ultimately connecting more young people to jobs.
Linked Learning to Employment
Given global demand for better education quality and relevance, a reform movement in the U.S. that blends rigorous academic learning and applied technical study may be of interest to other countries. Yet, the transport of a successful approach from one country to another must be carefully considered and implemented, with attention paid to the local political economy and education system variables. The Linked Learning policy brief discusses the successful U.S. approach—called Linked Learning—and RTI International’s approach to adapting it for other country contexts.
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