Youth Building the Future in Latin America- Regional SUMMARY 
In January 2015 Plan International started “Youth Building the Future” programme aimed to equip young people with the skills and opportunities to engage in employment and entrepreneurship in targeted regions in Brazil, Colombia and El Salvador. In 3 years, disadvantaged youth completed life skills, market-driven vocational/technical and business trainings. 60% of them entered decent employment - either in a job or by establishing/strengthening their own enterprise. This ensured future economic security for themselves and their families. The programme is supported by Plan’s Regional Office of the Americas (ROA) through technical assistance, evidence gathering support and (academic) research coordination. With youth in Latin America accounting for nearly one third of the population, they should be a major driver of regional economic growth. However, decent job opportunities remain inaccessible for large number of young underprivileged people, maintaining the cycle of poverty. The most important obstacles for inserting these youth into the labour market are their lack of professional qualifications and the requirement of prior experience. Young women face additional hurdles such as persistent gender stereotypes, discriminatory practices and adolescent pregnancy. Social instability in the target areas are characterized by armed conflict, social and gender-based violence, displacement, over-population, lack of formal jobs and weak local economies. This context limits business and entrepreneurial opportunities, fuelling many youth to engage in illicit activities. By given life-skills training and market-driven (based on a market scan) technical training to young people, they acquire the necessary skills to enter the job market as employees or entrepreneurs. By engaging companies for the development of training content and understanding their needs and expectations regarding future employees, the project facilitates the transit of vulnerable young people to decent jobs. Once these young people have the right skills and are either working or running their own business, they will be able to earn a decent income for themselves and their families. Due to deficiencies in education quality, and youth’s limited access to business networks, financial services and productive assets, a wide gap remains between the market demand and the provision of well-trained workers. Existing governmental training institutes cannot bridge the skills gap by technical trainings alone; soft skills trainings and post-graduate job insertion has proven to be essential for successful employment of youth. The final beneficiaries were 4.746 vulnerable young people (aged between 17 and 30) where 60% are young women in Brazil, Colombia and El Salvador. Most beneficiaries lived in situation of social vulnerability, had little or no job experience and minimum opportunities to access to vocational education. Participants of the project were equipped with technical/vocational or entrepreneurship trainings and 3.179 entered in the labour market or started their own businesses. Plan’s regional office developed a regional monitoring and evaluation (M&E) framework with common indicators; established and maintained a network of Youth Economic Empowerment (YEE) practitioners; conducted an action research to gather evidence about the critical factors to implement sustainable YEE programs and developed an online YEE toolkit with best practices and tools to improve YEE programing in Latin America. The project achieved sustainability by focusing in vulnerable youth in the target areas in Brazil, Colombia and El Salvador, improving the personal attitude and self-esteem of youth and equipping them with technical and life skills to contribute to their economic security and therefore also financial sustainability for their families. By establishing strong networks with training providers, governmental organisations in charge of youth employment, private sectors entities and individual companies, the project secured the long-term institutional engagement of key stakeholders to implement youth economic empowerment programs beyond the project. As part of the project, the Latin American network of experts working on Youth Economic Empowerment (YEE) has been established to facilitate exchange of knowhow and best practices between practitioners and improve the implementation of YEE programs in the region.