The Aid & International Development Forum (AIDF) is the world leading forum for the humanitarian aid, relief and development sectors which facilitates partnerships, addresses global humanitarian and development issues and encourages the sharing of expertise.
An activity under STRIVE, the Afghanistan Secure Futures (ASF) initiative enhanced economic opportunities for youth in Afghanistan by targeting youth apprentices. The program had two key components: increase the number and diversity of contracts for enterprises—primarily workshops in the construction sector—who employ youth apprentices, and improve working conditions and learning opportunities for those youth. The latter included a critical literacy training component as well as a workplace safety component.
Over the course of the 3 years, ASF reached 353 workshops and 1,080 youth apprentices, with approximately one-third of these receiving multiple ASF interventions. ASF’s role in supporting workshop owners—were awarded contracts totaling US$2.2 million–to secure contracts included: providing training; facilitating contacts between workshops and contractors; and connecting workshop owners to each other, facilitating the process of subcontracting, or joint bids by multiple workshops.
This STRIVE for Learning Activity Brief outlines the program's key approaches, methods, and outputs.
ASF was one of five country programs implemented under the STRIVE program, funded by the USAID Displaced Children and Orphans Fund, in close collaboration with the USAID Microenterprise Development office cooperative agreement. STRIVE is an Associate Award under the FIELD-Support LWA.
The first ever World report on disability, produced jointly by WHO and the World Bank, suggests that more than a billion people in the world today experience disability.
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This pioneering World report on disability will make a significant contribution to implementation of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. At the intersection of public health, human rights and development, the report is set to become a "must have" resource for policy-makers, service providers, professionals, and advocates for people with disabilities and their families.
The following is taken from a press release from the
In a bumper update of the Microinsurance Innovation Facility’s research papers we examine several pertinent topics relating to microinsurance.
Microfinance is about extending financial access to poor and excluded people. However, apart from a few notable exceptions, microfinance has not typically reached extremely poor people—those at the lowest level of the economic ladder. Some practitioners, governments, and funders, however, are specifically interested in reaching extremely poor people. Whether seeking to foster social protection or financial inclusion, many wish to understand how best to put them on the path toward sustainable livelihoods—a path that increases incomes, expands assets, and provides food security so that the poorest no longer require support from safety nets and can make good use of credit, if they want to.
This paper highlights the lessons learned from the Graduation Program first by describing how the model works and how various partner organizations implement it in the field. A subsequent section distills the early findings and is followed by a section on costs. The final section takes stock of the learning to date, including key constraints and outstanding questions.
The overall purpose of the ICE-K radio campaign was to increase awareness and knowledge of insurance and risk management among Kenyans, with the ultimate goal of increasing individual insurance use and closing existing knowledge gaps in insurance literacy among low-income household members. The training of trainers taught participants from Kenyan insurance companies to better tailor insurance product information to the needs of the low-income market, and prepared staff from AKI and the radio production partner, Advertising Matters, to tailor the campaign to the same low-income consumers. Technical assistance was offered to select insurance companies and microfinance institutions with an interest in marketing to low-income consumers after the end of the radio campaign. Finally, quantitative and qualitative data was collected to analyze the impact of the radio program.
The evaluation team developed methods to measure uptake and understanding of the radio content and messages, as well as changes in behavior. The report presents the results of research about the ICE-K radio campaign with listeners in Kenya and is intended to assess its efficacy before replicating similar media campaigns in the future, in Africa or elsewhere. The project also represented an opportunity to test the adaptability of MFO’s Risk Management and Insurance training curriculum to a mass media campaign. Report findings, based on baseline research in August 2010 and endline research in January 2011, reveal that the radio campaign had a measurable impact in changing listener awareness and knowledge, towards insurance.
Although there have been some economic gains in recent years, most Afghans continue to struggle financially, and an estimated 90 percent of Afghan families rely on informal employment to support themselves. Young people from poor families are generally unable to afford costs associated with formal schooling, which places them at a disadvantage when seeking to enter the workforce. In response, the Afghanistan Secure Futures (ASF) project has engaged youth apprentices and informal sector small enterprises, in order to improve economic opportunities for vulnerable children and youth apprenticed in small workshops in the construction trade. The activity was implemented by MEDA (Mennonite Economic Development Associates) under the STRIVE program managed by FHI 360, with funding from USAID’s Displaced Children and Orphans Fund (DCOF).
Download the PDF to find out how ASF generated new learning in an under-served arena of development: the role of non-formal education and apprenticeships in alleviating poverty.
