Employment & Entrepreneurship

Demand-driven, hands-on job training is an essential element of YouthBuild, and our emphasis on personal life skills development supports the basic skills necessary for sustainable livelihoods. YouthBuild International is partnered with governments, NGOs, multilateral organizations, and donors, to build systems, programs, and materials that respond to the growing crisis of youth unemployment, by preparing and linking unemployed youth to existing jobs and supporting lending and coaching to youth pursuing self-employment through entrepreneurship.

Experiential technical skills training is combined with job readiness training to prepare young people for jobs and self-employment. These training elements are demand driven and align with identified opportunities for youth livelihoods in the local market place. Young people acquire basic employability skills that will allow them to link to existing public and private systems that can provide advanced training. The training unfolds on  fully operational construction sites, where young people are working in teams to create and build permanent community assets, such as housing, community centers,  schools, orphanages, playgrounds and an array of green infrastructure projects.

In South Africa, YBI works with the National Youth Development Agency and the South African Department of Housing and Human Settlements to get young people employed in meaningful work. In the U.S., the Department of Labor funds YouthBuild to develop re-entry strategies to employ youthful ex-offenders. Young people in Haiti have begun skills training and construction work on infrastructure projects. YouthBuild has launched programs in four countries in Central America to engage gang-vulnerable youth in productive, employment-related training. YBI is partnered with the ImagineNations Group (ING) in promoting strategies to build pipelines to employment, especially for marginalized youth and idle, college-educated young people. ING and YBI have assessed youth entrepreneur programs in China, Bangladesh, South Africa, and Israel to gather best practices for global replication through in-country trainings, and a web-based portal for young entrepreneurs.