This metrics Master List (scroll to the bottom to view) has been developed from submissions received so far from members of the Coalition. Self-evidently, it is a work in progress in its very early stages – but it indicates how useful it is to see the variety of indicators measured by practitioners at the moment.
It started with a discussion with Hur Hassnain, M & E officer at Y-Care International who gathered some excellent statistics on the impacts of their Youth Job Creation initiatives in Liberia, Madagascar and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Hur, who is a director of the International Development Evaluation Association (IDEAS), gave us a framework of data that applies across most interventions, thus:
- Numbers involved
- Increases in income generated
- Jobs created and training delivered
- Youth participation in decision-making
- Improvements in Confidence and self-esteem
The School Enterprise Challenge managed by Teach a Man to Fish was the next to submit its approaches. It invites student entrepreneurs to submit very detailed data, and advises them how their submissions will be judged and how prizes will be awarded at Bronze and Silver levels. Students are supported with detailed written and video guidance materials to aspire to “sufficient” and “exceptional” levels of achievement in each category and how to avoid “insufficient” delivery. Their results are well-summarised in the article written by Nik Kafka and Martin Burt for “The Case for Urgent Action on Youth Employment” – Page 77.
Youth Business International and the Youth Business Trust of Trinidad & Tobago(YBTT) have some excellent published impact information on its website + probably the best job creation graphic in the field. It also submitted its Network Impact Matrix – which measures the performance and impact of the 50+ different Youth Business Trusts operating around the world. Shedron Collins, who is advising on the delivery of the Trinidad & Tobago Coalition project, offered some fascinating background documentation that inform his approach to job and enterprise creation measurement:
- Isenberg – How to start an entrepreneurship Revolution: how do you build a strong entrepreneurial ecosystem? This article offers a list of simple questions to ask as you build a strong ecosystem;
- YBTT uses an Entrepreneurship Pathway put together by a YBI’s Canadian partner, Futurpreneur, to support all stakeholders to develop and identify their roles within an entrepreneurial ecosystem. It has many great resources, including a Business Plan Writer and an Entrepreneurship Action Plan.
- The Global Startup Ecosystem report is a global report from Startup Genome that highlights elements of national entrepreneurial ecosystems that should be measured to find out what’s working and what’s not working.
- Finally, the YBTT Bi-Annual Survey Template is YBTT’s internal M&E document for analysing the achievements of the entrepreneurs YBTT has supported.
CDC is the biggest beast in the job creation field, its investees generating 743,000 jobs, 63,000 of which are new. CDC’s record of successful youth job creation through mega-investments is why DFID has, for years, believed that growing large businesses is the way to go, and therefore mostly ignored the much riskier sector of informal or sole trader job creation. But even CDC fails to generate the million new jobs a month needed in Sub-Saharan Africa alone – which is why this Coalition, and CDC, know that we have to stimulate a policy shift towards systems more intentionally designed to create jobs across all sectors.
Peace Child International was driven to the youth job creation field by members of its network increasingly concerned by the experience of not being able to find, and not sufficiently skilled to create, jobs and decent livelihoods. Working with highly disadvantaged young women struggling to improve their livelihoods in remote rural or slum areas, they follow the NORAD model of Monitoring & Evaluation youth job creation – which they have adapted over the years to suit the realities they find on the ground.
Many other organisations have promised to share their approaches with us and, in return for sharing, we shall share all our findings with them. The Institute for Development Studies at the University of Sussex, for many years Britain’s leading International Development think-tank, has offered invaluable advice in the start-up phase of this project – advice we are determined to follow and capitalise upon. For – though we are intent on making this a practitioner-led exercise, having the academic rigour and experience of IDS at our elbow is invaluable – especially when the complexities of our field lead us, as they will, to confusion and floundering.
The Metrics Master List – a Work in Progress
