Improving Livelihoods for Youth in Ethiopia

Results achieved at the end of the project in September 2017 include: (1) through project activities 60% of youth service organization staff reported improved effectiveness in delivering youth livelihoods programming leveraging the Street Business Toolkit (SBTK) entrepreneurial training resources. Furthermore 87.5 % of youth service organization interviewed reported improvements in their networking capacity as a key result of the project; (2) of youth who were engaged in a business prior to the project 38.0% reported a significant improvement in their business through increased weekly earnings at least six to 36 months after the project; (3) prior to the project 19.1% of youth reported saving money (16.8 female 21.6% male) which increased to 27.2% after their participation in the project (89 female 99 male). More importantly there were significant increases in the amount of money being saved by youth before and after the project where 51.5% of youth were now saving in a higher range of 51-100 Birr (currency in Ethiopia) per week. Female youth reported the largest movement going from 10.0% who saved between 51-100 Birr per week before to almost half of the female youth (46.0%) after. Of youth saving money 75.5% of youth (71.9% female 78.7% male) reported saving in a formal financial institution through strengthened youth-friendly savings and credit mechanisms established through the project; (4) of the 4 073 youth (2 084 female 1 989 male) reached and trained on the Street Kids International resources 52.3% of youth (44.4% female 61.3% male) attested to a ‘good understanding’ of business planning and management knowledge compared with 29.6% (26.4% female 33.4% male) prior to the training; (5) 710 youth (348 female 362 male) received seed funding for the launch of a new business or growth of an existing business through the project's business plan competition. These results contributed to improve quality of life for marginalized youth living in Add