Providing True Opportunity for Opportunity Youth: Promising Practices and Principles for Helping Youth Facing Barriers to Employment

Many "opportunity youth" -- youth who are not working or in school -- would benefit substantially from gaining work experience but need help overcoming barriers to employment and accessing the labor market.Those opportunity youth facing the most significant challenges, such as extreme poverty, homelessness, and justice system involvement, often need even more intensive assistance in entering and keeping employment, and are at risk of being left behind even by employment programs that are specifically designed to serve opportunity youth.This paper builds on the research literature with extensive interviews with employment program providers who have had success in helping the most vulnerable opportunity youth succeed in the workforce. Six principles for effectively serving these youth are identified

Addressing Injustices through MOOCs: A study among peri-urban, marginalised, South African youth

The legacies of colonial rule continue to impact everyday life, particularly in education. These structural inequalities are often reinforced and amplified in online ‘global’ education through a form of digital neocolonialism, which is where hegemonic powers indirectly control or influence marginalised groups through the internet or information technology. In striving for justice-oriented online education models, this study analyses to what extent Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), produced both internationally and locally, support (or could support) the needs, preferences, and aspirations of marginalised South African youth and address the material, cultural-epistemic, political, and geopolitical injustices they face. To evaluate what South African peri-urban youth desire in their education and futures, as well as the challenges they experience, a seven-part survey was conducted with 250 youth from five townships in South Africa. Responses showed that whilst participants strongly value and aspire to further their education, financial difficulties, infrastructural barriers, family problems, and lack of emotional support and life mentorship limit them from achieving this. Participants reflected on how colonial and apartheid legacies have affected their educational experiences and identities through inferior quality of education, forced languages, forgotten histories and incongruent values, cultural norms and practices. In parallel, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 35 MOOC designers, from South Africa and the USA, to investigate the ways in which efforts, if any, were being made to reach students most in need of quality education. Interviews covered themes of openness, accessibility, and justice. It was found that, depending on the MOOC designer’s understanding of social justice and decolonial thought, they placed varying emphasis on addressing different forms of injustice. Some focused on resource, access and infrastructural barriers, while others focused on issues of content relevance and knowledge production. Furthermore, MOOC designers’ attempts to address injustices strongly related to their own identities and lived experiences, highlighting the importance of plurality of thought and epistemic diversity in the producers of MOOCs. Drawing on the historical injustices and lived experiences of the youth, and the attempts to address injustices by the MOOC designers, it was ascertained that there is no one size-fits-all formula to creating equitable MOOCs. Rather, depending on the purpose and target audience of the MOOC, nuanced approaches to addressing injustices are suggested. These approaches are shaped by various leverage points that influence the types of, and the extent to which, participatory methods, accessibility measures, knowledge sources, assessment and critical pedagogy are implemented. Additionally, the importance of these leverage points varies over the MOOC’s lifecycle, from inception and design, to implementation and assessment. Bearing in mind the broad-ranging injustices that youth participants raised, these approaches are presented with great caution that educational technologies and open education are not panaceas but if designed and used appropriately and justly, can be tools for liberation

Leveraging the Power of Peer Groups for Refugee Integration

Refugee integration, one long-term solution to the large number of people fleeing their home countries, constitutes a challenge for both refugees and host societies. ICT and especially online peer groups seem promising to support this process. Building on literature demonstrating the societal benefits of peer groups, this paper proposes a novel peer-group-based approach to address refugee integration and introduces both an online and offline realization. A randomized field experiment in cooperation with public (refugee) services and a non-governmental organization makes it possible to expand existing research by quantitatively demonstrating societal benefits of online peer groups and ICT for refugee integration. Further, this paper is the first to assess the effectiveness of online and offline peer groups in one experimental setup comparatively. Results show that peer groups provide substantial value with respect to the integration domains social bridges, social bonds, rights and citizenship as well as safety and stability. While the outcome of the various integration domains differs for online and offline peer groups, participants’ adoption rates were higher for online peer groups

Employment Sector Working Paper No. 3, Recognizing ability: The skills and productivity of persons with disabilities, Literature Review.

The ILO will increase its efforts to advocate access to adequate skills development opportunities for disabled persons, in the coming years, as part of the process of implementing these international standards. To provide a solid knowledge base for these activities, a literature review of skills development initiatives targeting persons with disabilities was commissioned, focusing in particular on the contribution of skills development to enhancing the productivity of disabled persons. It is hoped that the review will contribute to opening opportunities for disabled persons to acquire skills which will lead them to obtaining and keeping decent work. Tony Powers of Powers and Associates (Australia) was the author of this working paper. The research was guided by Barbara Murray, Senior Specialist on Disability, Jo-Ann Bakker edited and prepared the manuscript for publication. The research was conducted as part of the preparation of the report for the General Discussion on Skills for improved productivity, employment growth and development at the 97th session of the International Labour Conference (2008). This working paper reviews the available evidence connecting the employment and economic status of disabled persons with their skills and productivity. It examines skills development strategies and their effect on employment, income-generation and productivity in both the formal and informal sectors in developed and developing countries. It also considers the impact of policies and practices designed to assist disabled people to achieve their productivity potential at work, including workplace accommodations and teleworking. It includes a number of illustrative case studies. It concludes with key policy messages which emerge from the literature review

Activating Older Unemployed Individuals: A Case Study of Online Job Search Peer Groups

Improving re-employment chances for older unemployed individuals is a priority for policymakers around the world. While digital job search interventions have proven beneficial for young and middle-aged individuals, their value to support re-employment at older ages has not been investigated so far. To shed light on the potential of digital interventions to assist older unemployed individuals, we analyze a unique data set from a randomized field study introducing online job search peer groups at the Federal Employment Agency in Germany. Results suggest that online peer groups offer substantial added value compared with traditional job search counseling. Participation in online peer groups significantly increases the number of job applications and job interview invitations. We show that older unemployed individuals are accessible for digital job search assistance and identify online peer groups as a powerful intervention to activate this target group

Social Inclusion of Young People

[Excerpt] Since the beginning of the economic crisis in 2008, young people have experienced difficulties in gaining a foothold in the labour market. While the situation has improved in recent times, in some Member States the youth unemployment rates are still a cause for concern. As a result of the crisis, young people are now the group at highest risk of social exclusion in Europe. The disengagement of young people can have serious consequences for an individual, for society and for the economy as a whole. This report investigates the social inclusion of young people in Europe. It first reviews the situation facing young people in Europe today and the cumulative disadvantages arising from disengagement from the labour market and education. It then goes on to explore recent EU strategies aimed at promoting the social inclusion of young people, focusing in particular on the operation of the Youth Guarantee initiative to combat youth unemployment in 10 EU Member States. Finally, the report examines several broader approaches to support social inclusion, including strands designed to promote youth empowerment and participation in society