Fifth Annual Work Plan: Youth Employment and Business Start-up Program (YouLead)

AID-383-LA-17-00001. The program aims to provide young women and men with access to high-quality, market-driven vocational education and training, as well as support to address structural and cultural impediments to employment. The program's vision is to improve access to job opportunities, reduce inequality, and promote social cohesion, citizen empowerment, and personal dignity necessary for sustained growth and development. YouLead's approach focuses on a three-pronged strategy: driving impacts from work completed to date, laying a strong foundation for new project activities, and strengthening systems, policies, and counterparts to ensure the sustainability of the program's most impactful interventions. The program's priorities include the resumption of activities requiring physical interaction, the integration of new cost-shared activities, and the acceleration of efforts to produce and promote online and digital content. The program has identified four priority sectors for job creation: construction, tourism, information and communications technology (ICT), and caregiving. While the analysis still supports the focus on these industries, tourism and ICT continue to demonstrate the most buy-in and leadership from the private sector. YouLead will continue to adhere to its demand-driven approach for work with the private sector and envisions accelerated work in tourism and ICT. In ICT, the program will build on the success of the BRIDGE program pilot by expanding it in multiple ways, including integrating the pilot learning process into a broader Open University of Sri Lanka's (OUSL) curriculum designed to train 40,000 youth. Tourism, the industry most impacted by both the pandemic and the 2019 attacks, is due for a resurgence and a reset in a more sustainable direction. YouLead will expand its training to help rebuild the tourism workforce, while also providing a more holistic set of activities that include small and medium enterprise (SME) training, as well as the creation of an authentic, more sustainable tourism product around long-distance walking trails. The caregiving industry in Sri Lanka is just beginning to mature, and YouLead will continue to engage with individual construction industry employers and technical trade associations that show interest and commitment. YouLead interventions in construction will be driven by an assessment of commitment, the creation of new or better jobs, and employment outside of the Western Province. The program's implementation plan includes the integration of two new cost-shared activities: the Skilled and Resilient Migrant Workers (SRMW) project and the Tourism Resilience Project (TRP). The SRMW project aims to provide migrant workers with skills and training to improve their employability, while the TRP aims to help rebuild the tourism workforce and create a more sustainable tourism product. YouLead's approach to sustainability and flexibility includes possible contingency approaches in the sub-components that will be most impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. The program is projecting that classroom trainings and in-person activities will be largely back in session by January or February 2022, but will continue to implement more flexible solutions, such as online training and career guidance, if physical interactions are constrained.