Projects / Learning Partner for the Global Opportunity Youth Network

Learning Partner for the Global Opportunity Youth Network

Project Information

Donor
The Aspen Institute

Location
Global

Sector
Global 

Client
The Aspen Institute

Service Type
MEL Systems

Timeframe
Jul 2020 - Jul 2021

The Global Opportunity Youth Network (GOYN) seeks to create sustainable economic mobility for Opportunity Youth – young people aged 15-29 who are out of school, unemployed, or working in informal jobs.

The initiative uses a collective impact approach for systemic change, bringing stakeholders together to create an infrastructure for lasting improvements in the youth employment ecosystem. The Network is housed at the Aspen Institute and co-led with Global Development Incubator (GDI), YouthBuild International (YBI) and Catholic Relief Services (CRS), Accenture, and Prudential Foundation.

GOYN’s work takes place in nine communities across 7 countries, including Colombia, Kenya, India, Brazil, South Africa, Senegal, and Mexico. In each community, local Anchor Partners coordinate a Collaborative that engages local stakeholders to understand the drivers of youth unemployment and accelerate pathways for youth economic opportunity. The initiative aims to progress toward three outcomes: improved youth economic opportunity, enhanced ecosystem collaboration, and systems shifts in the youth ecosystem.

As GOYN’s learning partner, DevLearn worked with Anchor Partners and the Global Team to develop a monitoring, evaluation, and learning framework and now provides ongoing practical support and capacity building using an MEL training toolkit. DevLearn has led three annual assessments of GOYN, employing an outcome harvesting methodology and innovative youth-led data collection approaches to gain insights from across the GOYN Collaborative infrastructure. The findings from this work have helped GOYN understand the progress taking place in each community, disseminate learning and best practices across the global network, and inform their strategy as communities begin to scale up.

African lady smiling holding jug

 

DevLearn acts as a Learning Partner to GOYN since July 2020. Our main achievements have been to:
• Developing an MEL Framework and System, including the development of a theory of change, indicators, definitions, and measurement methods. We worked closely with the Anchor Partners and global team to ensure that this was a participatory process.
• Build the capacity of partners in MEL, through a structured online training programme and the development and dissemination of an MEL Toolkit.
• Manage two annual reporting events, aggregating data from eight different Anchor Partners, and managing an innovative youth-led data collection process (through Whatsapp) to ensure that the views of all stakeholders are heard.