For youth employment initiatives, generating jobs is only part of the challenge; the quality of those jobs ultimately determines their impact
on young people’s lives. Across the countries where the Challenge Fund for Youth Employment (CFYE) operates, most young people are not unemployed but under-employed, working in informal, low-paid,
insecure or hazardous jobs with limited prospects for progression.
Improving the quality of existing work is therefore often as important as creating new jobs. In practice, several CFYE-supported
business models, particularly intermediaries working with SMEs or partners working in informal value chains, improvements to existing jobs accounted for a large share of outcomes.
This learning brief outlines CFYE’s approach to promoting job decency and strengthening job quality across a diverse portfolio, highlighting
lessons on how programmes can support meaningful improvements for workers while remaining aligned with business realities.
