Quarterly Report: October 1st to December 31st, 2016

The project was funded by USAID/Honduras under the EQUIP3 agreement. During the third phase of the project, which spanned from October to December 2016, the focus was on developing and implementing the Work Readiness Skills Program. The project achieved significant results in Outcome 3, Training and Certification in Work Readiness Skills Program. Both CADERH and CENET, the implementing organizations, were able to comply with the Quality Standards proposed for the adequate implementation of the Program for Certification of Labor Competencies (PCLB). This demonstrates that both organizations have adopted these standards in an institutional way and have reached a good level of organizational capacity to implement and continue to execute the PCLB. CADERH was able to develop and reach optimal scores in the areas of administrative-organizational, technical aspects, and institutional-political, proving that their organizational capacity meets the requirements established by Quality Standards. However, the organization should reinforce the Financial-Economic area, as its weak relationship with the sectors from which they could make arrangements to collect financial resources and continue to execute the PCLB reduces their organizational capacity. CENET, on the other hand, carried out analyzes and revaluation of the first OCA diagnosis and managed to improve their qualification within the adoption of the quality standards and their organizational capacity to make PCLB sustainable. As a government agency, CENET's legal framework provides support for the institutionalism of PCLB. Additionally, being part of the training process for Work Readiness Skills Program through METAS has allowed them to acquire a methodology which they have adopted and included within the services they provide as an institution. The project also developed tools that will allow CADERH and CENET to continue implementing the PCLB, including a diagnosis for PCLB sustainability, a strategy for the sustainability of PCLB, a strategy to increase the demand for PCLB, a business plan for the commercialization of the PCLB, a plan for the positioning of the PCLB, the copyright for the use, management, reproduction, and distribution of the training manuals in CLB, and the copyright for the use, management, and maintenance of the PCLB virtual learning platform. In Result 3, the training and certification processes carried out in this quarter, the project was able to complete and reach the proposed indicators. The number of young people enrolled in the program was sufficient to reach the proposed indicator of young people taking their certification exam, and young people who pass the certification exams. The fact that the project has been constantly accompanying its partner and implementing organizations both on PCLB and PHEL has resulted in an increase in the participation of young people in the Project and as an additional result of this effort, the proposed indicators of employability were also achieved. The project's Strategic Alliances and Labor Linkage component also achieved significant results. Although it is a result in the three phases of Project METAS, in Phase I it was mostly oriented to the search for alliances to position the International Certificate of International Preparation through the Work Skills Program. During Phase II and III, the objective of the result for Strategic Alliances and Labor Linkage was defined. Due to this change in the internal results, actions and activities had to be directed both to the search for alliances and to the labor linkage component. The project's labor linkage component achieved the proposed indicators of employability, which are reflected in the section of the report that corresponds to the project's labor linkage component. The project's efforts to accompany its partner and implementing organizations have resulted in an increase in the participation of young people in the Project.