Youth Employment Support

27. The specific objective of the program is to increase short term employment opportunities and to improve employability and incomes of targeted youth. The program seeks to address constraints on the demand and supply side of the labor market namely: (i) to improve technical capacity and promote creation and/or expansion of small youth owned enterprises in economically viable activities; (ii) to improve skills base of young people to make them more employable; and (iii) to provide a safety net and income supplement for the most vulnerable youth through public works. The program will be scaling up ongoing interventions to increase number of beneficiaries and expand geographic coverage. The project will pay particular attention to learning from its experiences through impact evaluations designed around different interventions. Finally, the program is expected to reduce social pressures and the risk of conflict by providing employment support to about 30,000-35,000 vulnerable youth over a period of three years.