Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:09 Welcome back to eliminate the gap. We're so delighted to, to have you continue on the journey here of season two with us. Uh, once again, I'm joined by sedan who's, uh, coming in here with us again, uh, from chiro, which is awesome. And we are joined today, uh, by Michael MCCA. Uh, Michael's a former, uh, senior advisor on youth to S a I D. Um, so welcome, Michael, thanks for, uh, joining us today.
Speaker 2 00:00:36 Thanks so much. It's great to be here and part of the conversation.
Speaker 1 00:00:40 Yeah, you bet. You bet. Uh, we're delighted. Um, so we wanna jump in here. Um, so I mean, your career you've been in, in, in, in, or working with, and, uh, on behalf of young people for a long time, you know, whether it was when, early on at peace Corps and then at creative and then the last five plus years, or so at S a I D um, you've seen a lot, particularly in the international side, around the evolution of youth development in terms of the way, uh, the rest of the world continues to kind of grab onto it and adopt its philosophies. So one of the big kind of pieces of work over the last 10 years, uh, for those of us in youth development was the development of youth power was very exciting. There's big. I D I Q um, that, that enabled, uh, lots of, uh, countries to be able to access funding, to, to propel and, and, and do more around use development. So, um, youth power of sunset, we're now in youth power 2.0, which is great. And we'll talk about that in a moment. So that's my long winded way to say. Now that youth power 1.0, has, uh, been completed, kinda what did you feel were the top things that kind of came out of that as a result that we could all kind of take forward?
Speaker 2 00:01:59 Yeah, no great question. I, this month, uh, USA's going to launch their, their new youth policy, and it's a big, it's a big deal because it is on one hand taking everything we've learned over the last decade, since the very first youth policy came out, that kind of said, Hey, we're doing a lot of youth development, but we're not seeing the great results that we expect. And, and that's where the first youth policy came out of. And that provided a framework for us to do a lot more research, uh, based learning, um, to figure out what does work in cross sectoral, um, efforts. And it, it's interesting, the very first youth policy at USA, the term positive youth development doesn't show up, but over the last 10 years, probably the most significant thing that came out of that was building the evidence base about what really works to help young people thrive and be resilient.
Speaker 2 00:02:53 And that is as both for USA to now the us government, the approach of positive youth development, which basically, you know, it's not rocket science, it's brain science. At the same time, we learned a lot about the adolescent brain and development and looking at the different stages and, and facets of young people's development. And that's allowed us to really change the way we, we design programming together with youth and with the, the broader local system. And so I think those are all really key parts of building the evidence base. And, you know, often there's a sense in the development community, especially the youth development community, that there's not evidence to support our investments. And that's both true and false. I would say it's, it's true because when you look at how much money is spent on research and impact evaluations in youth development, it's really small.
Speaker 2 00:03:45 We need to do better on that. Um, and it's false in that. We now over the past decade have been able to consolidate lots of research going on internationally, but also research driven by the investments of USA and other major donors and, and that's to a great degree, thanks to the work of, uh, youth power learning and youth power action, which were the first two components. And during that time, we put together the evidence base on how effective positive youth development is in low and middle income countries. And, you know, basically again, it, it's saying that what we know about effective youth development is we need to think of it in three dimensions. I, I often use a Rubic cube to show what we now know works. And it basically says we need to look at these four domains of assets and skills of the sense of contribution and opportunity for young people of their sense of agency, that they have the confidence to use these skills and the enabling environment, which are the caring adults and, and mentors and the safe spaces and the non-school hours and the prosocial norms and, and youth friendly spaces for, for services when we layer those things in, at the age appropriate way.
Speaker 2 00:04:58 So it's a lot about ages and stages. Now, you know, what is appropriate interventions for early adolescents, 10 to 14 versus later adolescents or emerging adulthood? So that's like on the Rubik cube that, that <laugh>, that's one way cutting down across that is then what are the appropriate interventions that target the youth, the family and peers, the community, or the local system. And too often in the past, we would just focus on the youth. And we missed out on all the different ways that by engaging the family and peers or other parts of the system, we actually were getting better outcomes. And then the third dimension is, is we, we learned that we need to focus also not to, it could be a, a youth workforce development project in Honduras, but if all we did was work out really good curriculum for, uh, workforce preparedness and then get them into the job, we often saw them falling out of that job, even though they had that opportunity.
Speaker 2 00:05:55 And that's because young people are facing complex and integrated needs. And so by taking a much more holistic approach and bringing in components that might address some of their health needs or violence in the community or their household, um, needs, we were able to take a much more cross sectoral approach. And that's why, you know, of all those projects that we funded under youth power learning and youth power action, it gave us the ability to really measure what that impact is of combining those three things age appropriate. Uh, socioecological looking at these right interventions for the right groups and then more holistic cross-sectoral,
Speaker 1 00:06:33 Uh, you know, it, it, it, I appreciate you going through all of that and ribs, cube, a great visual, certainly even for me, um, to kind of think about it and how it kind of interchanges, um, you know, one of the, and there were lots of wonderful things, particularly on the, the research side only because it, it really becomes this thing we could take with us in, in the field. So, like, for example, for me, one of the, the big ahas was being able to get to, uh, objectively, beginning to measure, uh, soft skill development in, in young people. I mean, that was a big nut for folks to crack, um, in, in this field because that's one area that we've all had to struggle with doing anecdotal kinds of, you know, ways and observations and all that still valid, but to objectively set some metrics around, that was one of many things that I see kind of moving forward. So anyway, I appreciate you kind of walking us through that. So that said youth power, 2.0, as we call it here in the field, um, what do you see or hope that kind of comes out of that as we're sitting here five years later?
Speaker 2 00:07:43 No, you're absolutely right. Youth power learning. We, we, a lot of that research to scan across the globe of what was working, how it was working, identifying what those challenges were and, and you're right. The, the research on soft skills has been particularly powerful to be able to focus in on which soft skills had the biggest impact on outcomes, whether it's violence prevention or sexual reproductive health or workforce opportunities with youth power two, uh, Y P two L E. What we've really tried to focus on is some of these tools that have been developed. So for example, under, um, youth power learning, we developed the whole measurement toolkit where we now have 50 different indicators that have measurement sheets behind them to help any organization measure these outcomes better during youth power, too. What we did is we built on, for example, the knowledge management sharing of this. So we had launched youth power.org, which is now the largest platform for knowledge management on youth development with over a hundred thousand users and 8,000 resources and, and five communities of practice that are constantly sharing peer to peer resources. And then we also launch youth lead and youth lead is that platform forum by young change makers. And right now we have about 15,000 young change makers who have their profiles up there and are leading youth to youth, uh, sharing of, of different, sorry, give me one second to
Speaker 2 00:09:16 Sorry about that. Um,
Speaker 1 00:09:18 Is Y all good?
Speaker 2 00:09:19 It had to happen technology. Yeah,
Speaker 1 00:09:21 Sure, sure.
Speaker 2 00:09:21 Um, so, um, sorry,
Speaker 1 00:09:23 My cat's gonna wander by, so it'll be okay.
Speaker 2 00:09:25 Okay. Sounds good. So, yeah, so what's fascinating about youth lead is how it's really been able to help drive youth led, um, uh, peer to peer learning, as well as what they're doing to innovate in these spaces. So, you know, one of the things that also came out in parallel with the youth power was the youth programming assessment tool. And the youth program assessment tool is this incredibly powerful, um, self assessment that can go along with a organizational capacity assessment for any organization it's being used now with ministries of youth and education in the Dominican Republican with, with nonprofit organizations in Columbia and lots of organizations, but it's in multiple languages. And it basically follows the competencies of effective youth development and allows any organization to look across that and see examples of what each of those 82 competency competencies look like. And that's powerful because it, it allows 'em to have a plan of action at the end of it on how they really make effective youth engagement work.
Speaker 2 00:10:29 And that going back to your question, what's different about Y P two L E it's, that it is looking much more at, um, I would argue some of the more marginalized communities that have been left out of traditional programming around youth development, and it looks at what, what we can do in that space, um, effectively. And so some of our projects that if you're looking across kind of USA's last five years of, of programming have been really combining better at the, what we know either on the social emotional, or the soft skills combined with some of the things we know about violence prevention and what we know about, um, inclusive economic growth, or in the case of like Indonesia, our, our <inaudible>, um, project is really looking at how we work together with communities of persons with disabilities, young people disabilities to create new enterprises or to strengthen the role of young people in the workforce opportunities. There.
Speaker 1 00:11:28 That's awesome. Thanks for going through all that.
Speaker 3 00:11:31 I, I really wish that, uh, this was something that could have been, or could be implemented out here in Egypt, especially that, uh, you know, we have, uh, the majority of the population is youth. The majority of the population is disadvantage youth that are, uh, you know, ready to go direct into the, the workforce and, and labor market. However, they're lacking a lot of different skills. And, um, there are a lot of, uh, projects and initiatives that take place, especially to, you know, meet, um, SDG goals and to see how youth can be integrated into achieving these goals over, over the long term as part of their sustainability plans. Um, and as you mentioned earlier for these kind of projects to succeed, you have to be able to involve different, uh, members of society, uh, be it, uh, private sector or civil society, not just, uh, you know, basically like going beyond the existing communities, uh, that the youth are within.
Speaker 3 00:12:51 So if we look at, look at, um, the existing initiatives and the projects and moving forward and taking into consideration, you know, the next five years and, um, the impact that, uh, the pandemic has, you know, caused all across the globe, how do you see, um, us development practitioners and projects, new projects that will be developed on the ground in different countries? How do you see, um, the, the tools that we need to, um, to design, um, to design in order to maximize the role of the private sector to maximize the role of CSOs and building human capital to facilitate sustainable growth of use related?
Speaker 2 00:13:45 Yeah. You know, we're, we're at a very pivotal moment. We have eight years left till, you know, the, the target date of the sustainable development goals. And we're, we're fairly far behind, according to most, uh, estimates on meeting some of those goals. And one of the things that we've been talking about a lot in the youth development field is you have an incredible, uh, resource of energy and innovation and ideas in this generation of 2.4 billion, young people ages 10 to 29, and the new youth policy of USA, as well as the new one of the, the European commission and, and of a number of other countries is pivoting a little bit the lens to say, all right, we did really well on certain things of improving youth programming in the past decade, in our own self assessment at USA. One of the places that we came up sure was true, effective youth engagement.
Speaker 2 00:14:39 And so you'll see in the, in the new youth policy, it really is all about these eight principles that when put together are releasing the energy of young people to be partners right now, uh, USA is doing some research in Kenya, for example, on the social return on investment of youth engaged in peace and security activities. Um, because we know that that research is needed to show what's the impact. If you engage young people effectively in peace and security on overall outcomes for the youth and for those communities in terms of the private sector, this is really fascinating because coming out of, you know, coming out of this pandemic, so many things have been disrupted and among them obviously young people's role in, uh, in the economic sector. And, and on the one hand, the private sector is desperate to get, um, talented, young, uh, new job entrance back into their, into their sector.
Speaker 2 00:15:37 On the other hand, you know, there is that, that challenge of well, what does that look like given what's happened with schooling and the disruption of all sorts of other outcomes for young people. But what we've found is, you know, with the private sector, they're one of our, our best allies in co-investing in human capital, whether it's some of the projects that we're doing with Microsoft, we're doing with Microsoft at USA, or with a lot of other organizations and, and companies, what they look for obviously is strong human, as well as social capital, um, for really driving the success of companies and of communities. Um, and, and the world bank has done a really nice job of identifying what that human capital index looks like. And showing that there is a, a true demographic dividend, if, if countries make the right investments, um, during that period leading up to a peak youth where we have the highest percentage of youth in, in the lifeline of a society.
Speaker 2 00:16:38 So what we're trying to do right now for example, is to take the hotel and hospitality, tourism sector, one of the fastest and largest growing sectors globally. Um, you know, they are looking for this combination of young applicants who have good job preparedness skills to fill thousands of jobs in, in different countries. In Panama. When I was working there, um, with a youth project called <inaudible>, we worked to develop with the, the tourism industry, a curriculum for workforce preparedness, tailored to that industry. And then we worked to, to draw young people from communities that had been disadvantaged and often left out to put them through that training program and into these job, uh, opportunity interviews. And what was fascinating was, um, I remember the very first cohort of AU who went through this training program, and then the hotels were going to come to interview them.
Speaker 2 00:17:33 The very first hotel, they came hired, 76 out of 80 of them. The, the rest of the hotels came, sorry, that first group had already been taken. What they're looking for. They're looking for a little bit of kind of support guarantee that those young people have got the, the right kind of workforce attitude skills and, and they can do a lot of the hard skills training. So it's a, it's an interesting partnership that we've been able to develop in a number of different sectors, the tech sector as well. Um, you know, and in the tech sector, what's been even more interesting is the role that young people have been playing in developing more of the gig economy, and then partnering that together with other organizations. For example, right now UNICEF's generation unlimited, uh, initiative is doing a partnership with Microsoft, both on kind of a passport to learning and a passport to earning where there's certifying tech skills of young people.
Speaker 2 00:18:29 There's a, a young woman in, uh, in, in Columbia, Karen kava, Hal who runs the BI nation. And she's now one of the largest platforms for online, uh, entre, entrepreneurship development for young people, both in Columbia, and now in south America at 27, she is a true entrepreneur. That's building the skills and she's packaging it in small micro units for learning so that they can reach young people in more disadvantaged communities on their cell phone and be able to get their certification doing some of these components. So there's a lot of interesting information put on between the private sector, CSOs and young people.
Speaker 3 00:19:11 That is, that is truly amazing. I also believe that, um, one of the methods of, um, encouraging the private sector is also trying to see how, um, uh, you can integrate, uh, entrepreneurship that is generated by use into the overall value chain.
Speaker 2 00:19:35 Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, no. And you know, the, uh, young leaders in agriculture project in Uganda that was running for the past six years, um, was really fascinating because it had young people learning ag food security, uh, and agricultural skills along the entire kind of market chain from other young entrepreneurs in that space and was able to really expand out, um, the way that young people were entering into the ag business sector, not just as, as farmers, but all across the continuum. And it was really powerful to see how a little bit older young adults were able to coach along very large numbers of young people to see the ag business sector, as something more than just farming. They beaten, excited about all the parts of commercialization, marketing, et cetera. And that, that's what I think made that successful combined with a series of positive youth development principles. So,
Speaker 1 00:20:38 So I, I have a question just thinking about some of my more recent experience, um, and then, and this was pre pandemic, and now this is, uh, I'm sure even more of the case with, with things that are happening, uh, around the world currently. So for example, I was working in coastal and, and for, for a while, and we were working and young people were remarkably and not surprisingly optimistic, and silience about all kinds of things. Um, and one of the things that we asked was what is it that they kind of wanted to do, right? These are high school age students, and what they started, uh, sharing were things, um, that recognized that their careers and their career choices needed to be only within Kosovo, um, because they were not gonna be able to travel. Uh, they were not gonna be able to go to university, for example, outside or only a handful would be because the European union didn't recognize Kosovo and the travel, wasn't very easy to go in between countries.
Speaker 1 00:21:45 And, and so all of a sudden, you, you, we're here doing good, you know, work and trying to inspire young people to that the world, you know, is out there in front of them. And yet we're, we're kind of constricted by the reality that they couldn't migrate and they couldn't move around from country to country in this particular case. And, and, and with the pandemic and, and some of the, uh, parts of the world that are unsettled, that's only gonna continue, uh, until some of this shakes out. So kind of help us understand ways to combat that. Um, and I know that's a, <laugh> a very difficult question, but, but in general, you know, in doing the youth development side, how are we going to maybe begin to fight against the malaise, uh, that young people might, you know, begin to just accept as reality versus that inspiration that we're attempting?
Speaker 2 00:22:36 Yeah. You know, the, this is a major crisis, the impact of, you know, not only climate, but currently, you know, the food scarcity issues. Um, as we see inflation rising around the world due to, you know, the impact of war and, and, and other climate related problems, you know, it's driving 60 million predominantly young people to migrate within and beyond their borders. And, uh, you know, in research in Honduras when you held all other factors, constant, the most, I, uh, important, uh, leading cause of irregular migration was whether the person was actually between ages of 15 and 24. So being young is a strong predictor of, um, whether or not they might, uh, consider migrating, you know, from the, the rural areas to the city and from the city across borders. And so part of that, uh, predictor of being young is due to that loss of opportunity, hope and rootedness that you're talking about.
Speaker 2 00:23:36 And so, um, you know, in, in the case of central America, how do you build a sense of rootedness when you're not seeing a lot of opportunities, or maybe, you know, in many surveys we see that young people just don't feel that local government or national government, um, care about their futures and, and that often leads to more marginalization. So for example, in, in central America, you know, looking at, uh, the role that we can play in strengthening, one sense of rootedness to their community is key. Part of that is working with municipal governments to help them be more effective in how they deliver services. So that, that you can count on the basic services and, and justice in your community. Part of that is also, you know, how do we get communities work to work together on citizen security and violence prevention, um, to address that issue, which is so important in certain countries.
Speaker 2 00:24:31 And then, you know, there there's the, the other part of it, which is do young people see meaningful opportunities to make change in their community? Are they given those opportunities? So we, we often, you know, will I, when we do our positive youth development training, I always say, if you're designing a new project, do not start with skill building. I say, I always say, start with, what's the opportunity to contribute, and what's the format that's going to take. So it might be, you know, we're gonna be developing the, the, uh, the apprenticeship component or the job placement component first, or the, the national youth service or, or local volunteering component first. Why, because that then defines where and how you wanna do the skills development that will allow them to be successful rather than putting all the emphasis on skills and, and, and training. And then we often stop there and the young people are skilled up without opportunity, and they feel marginalized again.
Speaker 2 00:25:32 So as we design, it's always start with where is the hands on opportunity that gets them as close to what the goal is. Um, and with that, then we're able to say like, you know, right now USA is starting to work on a, a national youth service program in some of the countries of central America. And, uh, in Africa, peace Corps, likewise is working on a number of these things to really create that, that broad network of opportunity that will also deliver some of these other opportunities of skills and assets in the, um, in terms of the, the other thing that's interesting. And you mentioned costal, which is fascinating because the link to like technology and the gig economy is really important where we can help young people find they can create businesses that are reaching across borders that allow them to, to meet some of those basic needs that they're looking for. And, you know, the, the, the changing demographics are really gonna require that migration policies change to allow qualified workers, to enter other countries, um, that especially that have low fertility rates, um, we know that that's coming because number of, of countries just need more workers to enter. But in the meantime, we have to look at where we create those, those opportunities through technology, through entrepreneurship training and through meaningful engagement at the community level, um, the way we've seen in, in a whole host of countries. So, yeah,
Speaker 1 00:27:02 You, you just to tie a bow on this part here is interesting. I mentioned that the, the young people, uh, shared what it is they thought that they wanted to do. And one of the things that they mentioned was that they wanted to be cyber defenders. Yeah. Um, because one, they could do it from where they are, and this was almost as important. This goes back to this contribution, uh, element of, of young people and how strong that pool is, um, that they wanted to also counteract the fact that they have historically been seen as the black hat, um, that region, uh, in, in kind of creating cyber disruption. And so they wanted to actually go against the grain in that way. And that was what is so remarkable. Um, so we're gonna pivot into one last question here and then, uh, move to a wrap here. Yeah. Um, but this has been fascinating.
Speaker 3 00:27:55 Yeah. I mean, um, I'm, I'm curious to, to know, is this still the case, even after the pandemic, the youth wanting to migrate?
Speaker 2 00:28:09 Yeah. I think it's been dramatically a country to country. I mean, obviously we're, we're seen in central America that there is, you know, a strong pull and push a set of pull and push factors to migrate. Um, and that one of the key priorities of those countries is how do we create better services and, and enabling environment that reduce the, that draw for irregular migration. But I think, yeah, I, I, I have to say, you know, if you look at the impact of climate on various countries, the impact of war, I mean, how many millions more are now on the move due to conflict that's going on? Not, not only in Ukraine, but in various parts of the country. So obviously all these things are, are linked together. Being able to, um, help young people, if we wanna move to a, kind of a different part of youth development, look at youth in conflict in crisis.
Speaker 2 00:29:05 Some really great research on, um, promising practices has come out just this past year, both by our middle east, north Africa bureau. And, uh, some research done by social impact and by, um, by search for common ground that looks at what is it, what does it look like to do positive youth development in those changing contexts? And it is different because all of those basic premises of, of those kind of key features of positive youth development in those domains are disrupted during conflict in, in crisis. And so we've now been able to pivot and say, all right, how do you ensure that these basic building blocks of effective resilience are in place even when the, the population of young people is on the move? Um, so that's one thing, one of the interesting things, going back to your question, Eric is, um, you know, I look at, for example, building rootedness in central America, for example, the, the partner that we've worked with on some of this is called glass wing, and they've done something really innovative.
Speaker 2 00:30:09 They got the private sector to partner with schools to build out some part of their infrastructure. And in exchange, they run these, these after school slash school based programs that have stem training that have, uh, sports and cultural training that have language trained that have, they have a series of programs that all have curriculum to them, but they're done in the non-school hours in the school space. And we know that one of the big challenges for young people, one things they, they most want is these safe spaces in the non-school hours. So USA is supported over 250 youth centers across central America in gang impacted communities. Glasswing works in, I think they're in 13 countries now, and they've actually done it by using the school space by doing the partnership between the private sector and the school, which isn't often easy to, to get that agreement. But then they use a, a, a curriculum that also allows them to bring in, uh, volunteers from the local private sector to be part of the, deliver those programs and to build longer term partnerships between the school, the org, the community organization, and the private sector. So,
Speaker 1 00:31:24 You know, it, that we've been able to, uh, cover a lot of ground here. And Michael, you certainly have been able to take us all around the world with some great examples. Um, both on what's worked in the past and what the optimism, the brightness of the future is. Um, as we move forward, particularly at least as we sit here today and some turbulent, uh, spots in the world, um, but grappling with climate change and food scarcity, and those kinds of things are new and will continue to be, you know, challenges. And so we've got some tools in our toolbox that I think that, uh, will help us adults and young people kind of work together to, to kind of combat those. Um, so, um, I appreciate the time, let me just say, personally, I just, as somebody who's been in, in, in this field for a moment, um, having you sit in that office at U S a I D um, for the last five years, um, was, was very, very, um, helpful, uh, for, for those of us, because you're so active, uh, out there in, in putting information back out into, uh, the, the ether, uh, as it were, whether it be on LinkedIn and other social media.
Speaker 1 00:32:40 And so I appreciated that role that you were playing, uh, beyond all the others, but that one in particular for many of us was, was very helpful to feel like we had access at our fingertips to some of the latest and greatest information. So I just wanna say personally, thank you for that.
Speaker 2 00:32:54 Thanks. No, you know, the, the over the past decade, and especially the last five years, the field has developed some incredible tools, not only the youth program assessment tool and the knowledge management platforms like youth power and youth lead, um, but just a whole array. Our, our, our youth Excel, um, mechanism, for example, for the first time USA is really supporting youth led implementation research on mental health in east Africa, on girls violence prevention in central America is there is no lack of good tools that have been developed. I would, I would argue our engine is strong. What we need to do is, is make sure that there's enough drivers for, for that vehicle of effective youth development that is integrated into all sectors, not as a standalone youth sector. And, you know, just one area where I think we put a lot of emphasis in the new youth policy and, and is being seen globally that we do need to focus on that we haven't, and that's adolescent, uh, mental health.
Speaker 2 00:33:56 It is, it was a pandemic before the COVID pandemic, and it's at a much more dramatic rate. And I think it, it is a risk to all development and particularly youth development right now in that there is not a really comprehensive response to it yet. Um, the surgeon general in the us has put it as his top issue aside next to, um, COVID, um, the president and the state of the union talked about the crisis and his second point of the state of the union that tells you that, you know, this is a big issue, but the development field hasn't quite gotten comfortable enough in how they're addressing that systematically. And so I think it, it particularly impacts young people, and that's a space we need to continue to look at how do we tie in components of, uh, mental health, psychosocial support as we move forward. So,
Speaker 1 00:34:48 Uh, I appreciate you mentioning that at here as well, and that's a whole nother area. Yep. Um, for sure. Um, we've covered a lot of ground. I wish we could go longer. Um, but, but Michael, I appreciate, uh, you spending some time with us today and we look forward to, you know, future conversation.
Speaker 2 00:35:07 Excellent. Thank you so much to both of you for your great work. So
Speaker 1 00:35:10 Thank you.
