Caribbean Virtual Policy Network on Youth Education and Employment (VPNYEE) Initiative

The Caribbean Virtual Policy Network on Youth Education and Employment (VPNYEE) is a new initiative spearheaded by the United Nations system and co-convened by the CARICOM Secretariat, the Caribbean Employers’ Confederation, the ILO and UNESCO. Its primary goal is to help countries and stakeholders specify and understand which public policy interventions effectively support youth employment. It also aspires to put youth employment at the center of the national policy discourse through the promotion of well-informed and evidence-based practices as well as through the creation of a Caribbean led community of practice.

The network activities started in the last quarter of 2017. In December,  the VPNYEE web platform, hosted within the broader UNESCO SDG 4 -8 TEAMSNET platform was launched and  made available to all registered users (registration is free and via this link). The platform contains a number of documental resources of relevance to practitioners and is available to every user who wishes to utilize its feature as a virtual work place or as an information exchange tool.  Also during the same month, a series of monthly webinar on topics of interest to the youth education and employment theme (entrepreneurship, reintegration of juveniles, financing of TVET, demand side policies, migration) were launched. Recording of the webinars and the background material are available on the VPNYEE platform in the specific webinar section.

Currently (q3 2018) talks are ongoing related to initiatives the VPNYEE can support. Amongst the activities object of discussion is the idea to undertake one or more “monitoring and evaluation clinics” to support country-led youth education and employment programmes and interventions in designing and implementing their own monitoring and evaluation systems. Within such specific framework, the VPNYEE is to launch, in q4 2018, a participatory evaluation of ongoing youth employment programmes. The evaluation, which is to make use of mobile technology and large scale surveys  to reach out to the  largest number of youth,  is  financed with UNDOCO Innovation funds which the ILO and the UN agencies in the Caribbean received as a result of competitive  bidding. Other potential areas of intervention being discussed are the design and implementation of new or revised youth education and employment programmes and research on youth specific topics.

The ILO and the other Convenors welcome proposals for partnerships and encourage any Caribbean practitioner to become actively involved with the network.

For any additional info and suggestion contact ilocarib@ilo.org

October 2017