Objective:
The Adolescent Girls Initiative (AGI) promotes the transition of adolescent girls from school to productive employment through interventions that are tested, and then scaled-up or replicated if successful. The initiative is currently being implemented in the following seven countries: Afghanistan, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Jordan, Liberia, Nepal, Rwanda, and South Sudan.

Launch date:
The AGI was launched on October 10, 2008 as part of the World Bank Group’s Gender Action Plan – Gender Equality as Smart Economics –- which helps to increase women’s economic opportunities by improving their access to the labor market, agricultural land and technology, credit and infrastructure services.

Partners-to-date:
The Bank’s partners in the AGI are the Nike Foundation and the governments of Afghanistan, Australia, Denmark, Jordan, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Liberia, Nepal, Norway, Rwanda, Southern Sudan, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. The Bank is also developing partnerships with other public and private sector organizations interested in joining the AGI.

Impact Evaluation:
Because the evidence on what works in facilitating the transition of adolescent girls and young women to productive work is thin, rigorous impact evaluation is an important part of the initiative. Impact evaluations will also help build the case for replication and scaling up based on rates of success.

Financing:
A total of U.S. $20 million.

• AGI slideshow
• Gender and Development: Learn. Work. Thrive.
• AGI Progress at a Glance - Where We Are (PDF 3MB):World Bank Sept 2011

• Podcast "Power to the girls" Oct. 2010
• October 6, 2010: AGI High-level Event - Giving Adolescent Girls 'A Fair Chance'
• July 22-23, 2010: AGI Technical Meeting
• Story: How Can the Bank Help Young Women Find Work?
• October 10, 2008 – Launch of Initiative

Enabling women to move successfully through education to productive employment will have a very high payoff in terms of long-term growth and poverty reduction." - Commission on Growth and Development, 2008

Female Youth Employment Initiative (FYEI)

Objective:
Provide job skills and training to an estimated 2,000 adolescent girls and young women (age 18-30) in Balkh Province, leading to increased access to wage employment.

Implementing Agency:
The Ministry of Education, building on synergies with the ongoing Bank project Educational Quality Improvement Project (EQUIP I and II)

• Skills training in health care, specifically training of community midwives, and office skills for jobs in private sector and public sector
• Life skills training (leadership, management of income and budgets, employee rights)
• Social mobilization and outreach to mobilize communities and young women
• Social marketing to link trainees to labor demand in private and public sector offices
• Institutional capacity building

Timeline:
After delays caused by a deteriorating security situation, the pilot became effective on August 21, 2011, with the signing of the Grant Agreement by both parties.

• Proposed design: Randomized Controlled Trial
• Selection method: Individual lotteries within communities among eligible girls

Task Team Leader:
Jennifer Solotaroff, Social Development Specialist (SASDS)

NOW – New work Opportunities for Women

Objective:
Improve the employment prospects of 900 female community college graduates in Jordan, focusing on alleviating the barriers which prevent young women from finding jobs.

Implementing Agency:
Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation. Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research is also involved in design and implementation.

• Employability skills training: Interpersonal and other basic job skills that employers identify as constraints to hiring college graduates, females in particular.
• Job vouchers: a short-term subsidy to incentivize firms to hire new graduates with no experience, and to provide firms with an opportunity to overcome stereotypes through directly observing young women at work.

Timeline:
Training began in September 2010. Information sessions for business associations and private firms have also been completed.

• Design: Randomized Controlled Trial. One group of students will receive both the skills training and the wage subsidy in parallel, to measure the joint effect of the combined interventions.
• Selection method: Lottery among graduates from 8 colleges completed in July 2010
• Baseline data has been collected and combined with administrative records to create a unique dataset on female community college graduates.

Task Team Leader:
Tara Vishwanath, Lead Economist (MNSPR)

• Project Result: New Work Opportunities for Women Pilot Project
• Busting Barriers. Jordan–thinkEQUAL (video)
• New Work Opportunities for Women in Jordan (PDF 244KB)
• Jordan NOW Pilot Program
• Turning frustration into hope: Adolescent Girls Initiative helps break down employment barriers in Jordan

Adolescent Girls Initiative (AGI)

Objective:
Build the capacity of unemployed young women to engage successfully in small business activities by using a public-private partnership model to create more economic opportunities for Lao youth, females in particular.

Implementing Agency:
Young Entrepreneur Association of Lao PDR (YEAL)

• A 'development market-place' that will feature promising youth business projects in three provinces (Vientiane, Luangprabang and Champasak) with finalists receiving small start-up capital grants. Criteria that promote the participation of female entrepreneurs are being established.
• Basic business skills training (development of a business plan, finance management, marketing etc.) provided to mentors and youth participating in the development market place. At least half will be young women (ages 16-24).

Timeline:
Implementation started in December 2010. A business plan competition for young entrepreneurs was launched and 95 selected candidates (two-thirds female) have followed training programs on “Start your Business” and “Write a Business Plan”. The first Young Entrepreneur Marketplace Competition took place June 18, 2011, showcasing the ideas of 50 young entrepreneurs and awarding 11 grants to start up businesses. Training is also being provided to mentors from the private sector that support grantees as they set up businesses. Twenty-five counselors were trained in May 2011 and 132 students (81 female) attended the first batch of career training. Three more batches will be conducted in 2011.

Monitoring and Evaluation:
Monitoring and evaluation with a strong focus on dissemination and knowledge management is an integral part of the project. Project indicators to monitor progress and outcomes related to youth entrepreneurship are being developed and will be disaggregated by gender.

• Young entrepreneurs in Laos share their innovative business ideas (video)
• Lao Young Entrepreneur Market Place 2011 Competition

Task Team Leader:
Helene Carlsson Rex, Senior Gender Specialist (EACLF).

Economic Empowerment of Adolescent Girls and Young Women (EPAG)

Objective:
To promote entry into wage and self-employment for approximately 2,500 girls and young women (age 16-27) in nine communities in Greater Monrovia and Kakata City, via the provision of business development skills, job skills and life skills.

Implementing Agency:
Ministry of Gender and Development

• Six-month training in either job skills targeted to sectors with high demand (e.g. hospitality, house painting, professional driving, office/computer skills and security guard services) or business development.
• Six-month support for job placement or links to micro-credit, depending on the training received.
• Other training and support: life skills training, small group learning, a business plan competition, mentorship, savings accounts, child care, and transportation.
• Capacity building activities targeting implementers and service providers

Timeline:
Training is delivered in two rounds. In the first round 1,131 girls received training. The second round was launched in July 2011.

• Design: A pipeline design to compare young women who receive training to those who have not yet received training at the end of the first round.
• Selection method: All eligible girls entered lottery to receive training in Round 1 or 2.
• The baseline survey has been completed, covering every program participant and their households. Results of the survey will be released in late October 2010.

Task Team Leader:
Peter Darvas, Senior Education Economist, AFTED.

• Liberia - Training Helps Young Women Find Employment (video)
• Launch of EPAG
• EPAG Project convening Entrepreneurial Fair
• Liberia winning MDG3 Award
• Empowering Girls and Young Women in Liberia (PDF 278KB)
• Liberian Oak - Young Women Plant: the Liberia pilot is the first of its kind, under the Bank’s global AGI initiatives.
• Adolescent Girls Profiles - Benina in Liberia

Adolescent Girls Employment Initiative (AGEI)

Objective:
promote access to employment and increased incomes for about 3,500 young women (age 16-24) by scaling up and modifying an existing skills training and placement program—the Employment Fund (EF)—that has shown strong results to date.

Implementing Agency:
Helvetas Nepal implements while the Ministry of Education chairs the EF Steering Committee.

• Technical skills training for which there is a proven demand in the local labor market
• Life skills training that addresses age and gender specific challenges that girls and young women face in Nepal.
• An outreach and communications campaign to ensure that poorer, less educated and more vulnerable girls access training and employment opportunities. Contracts with private training providers also include financial incentives to recruit and train youth from the more disadvantaged groups.
• Capacity building for training providers.

Timeline:
Implementation started in February 2010. Of the planned 1055 participants, 810 women were trained by December 2010 of which 776 have taken a skills test with a pass rate of 90%. These women also received psychosocial training, awareness on reproductive health and HIV/AIDS, as well as business and enterprise skills training. Training providers have assisted graduates in finding paid employment by linking them to employers and/or assisting them in starting their own businesses.

• IE Design: A Regression Discontinuity Design in which girls admitted into the program according to a set of numerically scored criteria are compared to girls who fell just below the minimum score required for entry.
• Selection method: Each training provider ranks applicants and accepts the top candidates for training.
• Participants from the AGI are also compared with other students, including young men and women 25-35, from similar training programs managed by the implementing agency for other donors.
• The baseline survey for the first batch of training has been completed, covering 11 districts and 1,500 respondents.

Task Team Leaders:
Venkatesh Sundararaman, Senior Economist (SASED) and Jasmine Rajbhandary, Social Protection Specialist (SASSP)

• Be a Barista in Kathmandu. Nepal–thinkEQUAL (video)

Adolescent Girls Initiative (AGI)

Objective:
improve employment and increase incomes for about 2,000 adolescent girls and young women (age 15-24) in two urban and two rural districts in Rwanda.

Implementing Agency:
Ministry of Gender and Family Promotion.

• Technical training for self-employment (in areas such as horticulture, agro-processing, tourism, arts and crafts, technical servicing and solar technology, ICT and secretarial services)
• Psychosocial support, life skills and business development training to enable them to establish profitable small enterprises.
• Support to form cooperatives which will be partnered with a local entrepreneur to receive hands-on coaching on how to manage a business. Cooperatives will also be linked to micro-finance institutions active in the project districts.

Timeline:
The grant agreement was signed September 12, 2011. Delays were caused by a change of government implementing agency, lengthy process of familiarizing the Ministry with Bank procedures, and three recruitment rounds for a project manager. Project effectiveness is expected in early 2012.

• Proposed design: Randomized Controlled Trial
• Selection method: Lotteries among eligible girls in each sector

Task Team Leader:
Christopher Finch, Sr. Social Development Specialist (AFTCS)

Adolescent Girls Initiative

Objective:
Improve employment and increase incomes of 3,000 adolescent girls and young women (age 15-24) through demand-driven training and linkages to market opportunities.

Implementing Agency:
BRAC South Sudan. The government counterpart is the Ministry of Gender, Child and Social Development.

• 100 village-level Adolescent Community Clubs across four states (Central Equatoria, Eastern Equatoria, Jonglei, and Lakes) provide safe spaces for girls and young women to receive training and to socialize.
• Interventions offered at the clubs include demand-driven skills training, financial literacy training, life skills training, and access to savings clubs and microcredit.
• 100 'Adolescent Leaders' are being trained to help run the clubs. BRAC also involves parents and local authorities in the operations of the clubs, alongside the beneficiaries/club members.

Timeline:
By November 2010, 100 adolescent clubs with girl members were established in five counties in four states. Approximately 3,000 adolescent girls are receiving life skills and livelihood training in selected trades, including driving instruction, computer training, tailoring, agriculture, and hair dressing. BRAC, the implementing agency, is also working to link young women with vocational training opportunities including carpentry and joinery, welding and brick making.

• Design: Cluster Randomization. Villages where clubs are established have been selected randomly
• Selection method: Within each village, girls self-select to participate in the club and trainings
• The baseline survey will be completed by the end of October.

Task Team Leader:
Yasmin Tayyab, Sr. Social Development Specialist (AFTCS)

Resources:
Empowering Girls and Women in South Sudan: Report from the field