USAID/Nepal Education for Income Generation Program

The project's demand-driven approach creates training courses that meet the needs of the local market and links youth to employment opportunities. EIG builds on Winrock's previous work in Nepal and has four components: entrepreneurial literacy, vocational skill training, increased rural incomes through agricultural productivity and enterprise training, and scholarships for dalits and targeted youth. The integrated 10-month entrepreneurial literacy course sets individuals on the path to becoming entrepreneurs, employees, or employees. The course covers life skills, peace-building, HIV/AIDS awareness, health, entrepreneurship, reading, record keeping, math, business planning, and profit/loss calculation. It serves as a foundation for additional training in vocational skill areas or agriculture. Seventy percent of graduates receive training in vocational education or agriculture, with 70% of those trained in vocational education being employed within three months. In vocational education, EIG ensures that at least 80% of skill-trained graduates are employed within three months after graduation. The project uses a demand-driven approach, identifying jobs and conducting trainings, and linking graduates to opportunities. Many of the jobs are in construction, service industries, and small-scale agriculture. High-value agriculture, such as off-season vegetables and goats, is also an important income-generating activity for rural smallholders in Nepal. EIG uses a market-driven, value-chain approach to increase income and food security by linking trained farmers to markets and building the capacity of local service providers to offer ongoing fee-based services and inputs to farmers. The project builds the capacity of agro-vets, distributors, and manufacturers along the value chain to ensure smallholder farmers can access inputs and markets. EIG also provides scholarships to dalits and disadvantaged youth to enable them to pursue studies in the formal education system and selected technical fields. The project has achieved significant outcomes and results, including developing a 10-month four-curricula for business literacy and training over 700 trainers to deliver the course. More than 30,000 disadvantaged youth have graduated from the program, with over 82% of those graduated having jobs or self-employment with monthly incomes averaging 4,000 rupees. Additionally, 43,000 marginalized youth have been trained in high-value agricultural production and linked to private sector input and markets, increasing their income and access to nutritious foods.