Mostly trainings do not fit market demands. What are smart tools that are easy to use or fitting in train-the-trainers models?
Attitude and Mindset
Agriculture is dirty and not hot to youngsters. Make it more attractive to them. Use local young peer-to-peer exchanges and call it business talks, youth modern tools like DJ's and music, dance, drama and competitions. Make it cool and give in hands of Youngsters. From negative image to cool attractive image.. (see for example Cool Farming)
Transform Modern Expertise to Practical Lessons
Train universities in translating new modern agriculture knowledge in practical lessons and pilots, design a practical pipeline (Cool Farming). Use practical instruction movies for new machines or treatment of diseases. Organize small local facilitated meetings around these videos (see for example Digital Green Farmers-to-farmers).
Internships by local enterprises are working and attractive for investors like Dutch embassies or local governments.
Triggers from Outside Community
Organize Skype calls with youngsters abroad from a rural Hub to open up minds and share expertise (see for example Sote Hub).
Wood camps to design local solutions/innovations for agriculture issues with an external group of experts. You could apply for this and when they select you it is free (IDDS - impressive successful numbers all over the world).
In rural areas districts are traditional narrow minded minds and you could have brainstorms it will not open up minds. Triggers form outside are helpful (Fedde- ON).
Organize business travels to showcase your products on smart places in the test and in the scaling stage, have business talks with peers abroad, learn in practice (brilliant entrepreneurs).
Program Design and Tools Rooted in Deep Understanding of the Needs of Youth.
“Young people have diverse livelihoods”, they combine multiple employment and entrepreneurship activities — a major take- away from a recent MasterCard Foundation study in Uganda and Ghana (Source: Youth at Work study http://www.mastercardfdn.org/building-economic-opportunities-for-youth/). Programs can have greater impact by combining entrepreneurship, technical and job-readiness training and support. "A key component is the development of life skills such as making priorities, reliability, and teamwork, which allow young people to be successful in any type of livelihood.” (Source: IYF http://www.iyfnet.org/blog/using-mixed-livelihood-lessons-better-programming)
Consider rural youth’s busy schedules: “Just-in-time” training modules (especially at vocational training centers) offer flexible times and short-term courses, enabling students to return to school, and provide an alternative to the longer, more rigid and demanding training modules that tend to exclude youth who have family and work obligations.
‘Holistic Approach' Seems to be the Norm in Supporting Young Entrepreneurs
MasterCard Foundation’s Economic Opportunities for Youth Program applies a youth-centered holistic approach, where “a holistic approach (is applied) at all programming and ecosystem levels is critical,” and has proven to be effective (Source: USAID's State of the field report: Examining the evidence in youth workforce development.) This includes:
At the youth level: a focus on human capital (training and education) + financial capital (financial services) + social capital (social support networks)
At the organizational level: Harnessing the collective effort of various private, NGO and governmental players through a consortium approach,
At the macro-economic policy level: Working with the government to invest and develop a more enabling environment.
Working in groups to conduct short-term business activities, participants “learn business by doing business”; Making Cents and Liberia LAUNCH project.
Enabling members of local savings and self- help groups (SGHs) to become entrepreneurs. Unilever’s Project Shakti partnered with SHGs across India to identify and train entrepreneurs within the groups, who then take loans to buy stock from the SHG or savings groups, and become local distributors for the company (https://www.unilever.com/Images/es_project_shakti_tcm13-387473_tcm244-409741_en.pdf).
