Christian Children’s Fund was a sponsor of the Global Youth Enterprise Conference held in Washington, D.C., Sept. 15 and 16. The conference, organized by Making Cents International, brought together 350 practitioners, technical experts and donors from the international youth enterprise, employment and livelihood community.
The theme of this year’s conference was effective methodologies and practices for monitoring, evaluating and conducting impact assessments. CCF presented its new “Youth Employment and Well-Being Scorecard.”
The scorecard consists of 20 questions that focus on issues important to CCF’s skilled and involved youth program outcomes, such as transition to the workforce, parenthood preparation and leadership, and leadership and social engagement.
A random sample of youth program participants completed the survey and were then re-surveyed later to assess any changes in their circumstances.
CCF’s pilot experience was shared during a roundtable discussion led by CCF’s Dev Miller (senior microenterprise development specialist), Lloyd McCormick (Africa Region MED advisor) and Ousmane Thiongane (executive director of CCF’s microfinance partner in Senegal), who participated in a field validation of the survey questions.
Youth enterprise development is an evolving field with little documented evidence of program effectiveness. Since the scorecard was developed as a low-cost and easy-to-administer monitoring tool, the session generated considerable interest.
Through the scorecard, CCF gains insight into the types of interventions that are most likely to yield significant change in the lives of youth and identifies gaps that require an adjusted program approach.
The development and testing of the scorecard was made possible with a grant provided by the Brinson Foundation. The grant now allows for an external, expert review to be undertaken, with a goal of being ready for pilot testing by the end of the year.
During a “Lunch & Learn” presentation at CCF’s Richmond headquarters Sept. 22, Dev, Lloyd and Ousmane gave a summary of the roundtable presentation and discussed the broader role of livelihood programming.