Following completion of the technical training, treatment A and C individuals received a certificate and then graduated from the program after conclusion of the on‐the‐job training sessions. Participants in groups B and C were invited to form business clubs composed of members of their own choosing from the pool of program beneficiaries. The aim of the business clubs was to raise repayment rates, although group liability was not enforced because individuals who may have participated in a club could establish their own businesses and obtain secure microloans individually. After the business club participants in treatment groups B and C had completed their training, HELP‐SL was to assist them through microfinance facilitation. However, the Ebola crisis disrupted the implementation of this initiative, thereby limiting the intervention’s relief of capital constraints to the cash stipend provided to participants in all three treatment groups.

Competing hypotheses posited by local and international policy makers about what interventions might be effective in relieving constraints to youth employment informed the design of the three packages, although the lack of a labor force survey since before the civil war limited knowledge about the current labor market dynamics. The first hypothesis was that youth lacked the job‐specific technical skills that were necessary if they were to be absorbed in the labor market, preferably in wage work. The second was that youth lacked the combination of entrepreneurial skills and capital that would enable them to engage in a business on their own, for example, by creating and expanding a household enterprise. The third was that capital was the binding constraint, and the impact of a capital infusion should therefore be tested alone against the impact of training; however, testing this hypothesis was infeasible from a political economy and operational perspective.

The impact evaluation baseline data collection was carried out between August 26 and November 14, 2013, during program enrollment and covered the 3,319 shortlisted individuals who participated in the lottery process. The randomization yielded balance between the treatment and control groups (appendix B). Of the 23 variables tested, only three main differences were found between each of the treatment groups and the control group.<sup>10</sup> The endline survey was conducted in June 2015, less than a year after the end of the interventions (six months after the end of the business skills training and nine months after the end of the technical skills training). The evaluation therefore provides evidence of the program’s impacts in the relatively short term. Of the 3,319 people who took part in the lottery and in the baseline survey, 2,782 were interviewed at endline—50.1 percent of whom were women—and thus have been included in the analysis (see section 4a on attrition).

The evaluation instruments were translated into Krio, the language most widely spoken in the major urban areas of Sierra Leone. The baseline survey was administered to each participant at the VTCs where the applications had been submitted, while endline data were collected at the homes of beneficiaries. The endline survey relied on computer‐based personal interviews, while the baseline survey was paper based. Because of the randomized design, these differences should not have introduced any bias in the results.

> 10 The baseline report examines the baseline status of the participants in the treatment groups and the control group.

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