Market assessments are a crucial process for understanding a new or existing market. This process is fundamental to ensuring that a program is market-driven, meaning it finds, reads, and responds to signals from the economic market. The market includes supply and demand, as well as the context, of the good or service being studied. It also encompasses the youth as clients, prospective clients, sellers, and producers, as well as the formal and informal labor markets that youth enter.
The goal of this learning product is to strengthen market assessments for youth workforce development programs. It considers issues such as capacity, local context, tools, and approaches, and the inclusion of youth in these assessments. The learning product is based on the experiences of three organizations: Education Development Center (EDC), Save the Children, and the International Rescue Committee (IRC), which conducted market assessments to develop and maintain market-driven youth workforce development programs.
EDC’s Haitian Out-of-School Youth Livelihoods project, IDEJEN, provides basic education, life skills, job and skills, vocational training, and entrepreneurship training to out-of-school youth, ages 15-24, in Haiti. The project also supports youth as they transition to employment, self-employment, or further education. Save the Children’s Rural Youth Livelihoods project, New Beginning, targets rural youth, ages 13-18, and helps equip them with the skills, knowledge, and knowledge to transition to more productive work through life skills and livelihood training. The program also promotes savings and planning for saving. International Rescue Committee’s (IRC) Legacy Initiative works in partnership with schools and national agencies to improve the quality and relevance of local education opportunities and bolster national education systems in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Côte d’Ivoire.
The process of conducting market assessments benefits from the perspective of the youth to understand the complete picture of what products, services, and skills are in demand. This can help programs determine the most promising opportunities and the best fit for young people, given their skills and preferences. Market assessments that involve youth also open up a window into the youth market and formal and informal labor markets. They generally involve surveying youth as clients and/or including youth in the assessment process.
The guidelines for making market assessments genuinely youth-inclusive involve segmenting the youth market, making the most of youth as clients and participants in market assessment, and encouraging youth to be problem-solvers and empowered. The process also involves managing expectations and managing expectations can be challenging, as youth may have inaccurate or incomplete information. However, this can be mitigated by using a variety of straightforward tools for market assessments and balancing short-term and long-term expectations.
In fragile environments, such as those with limited formal education, social networks, and security, and limited local training capacity, market assessments can be challenging. However, they can also present new opportunities, such as using social networks and informal networks, and leveraging limited resources. The conclusion of the learning product emphasizes the importance of considering the breadth of markets and the importance of market assessments in fragile environments.
The resources section provides additional information on the organizations involved in the Practitioner Learning Program, including Education Development Center, Save the Children, and the International Rescue Committee. The annex section provides a summary of each organization’s project and a description of the market assessment methodologies used.