What Works in Entrepreneurship Education and Training Programs for Youth?

The report is intended to help United States Agency for International Development (USAID) staff and implementing partners understand outcomes that can reasonably be expected from entrepreneurship programs and apply this understanding to designing and implementing future programming. In the face of large-scale youth unemployment worldwide, entrepreneurship has grown in popularity as an intervention, particularly where few wage jobs exist.

Entrepreneurship traditionally refers to starting or expanding a growth-oriented business that creates value. Entrepreneurs identify an unmet market opportunity and marshal the financial, organizational, and other resources to exploit it, usually assuming a degree of risk. In practice, however, entrepreneurship programming has been extended by the global development community to support a wide variety of youth business and self-employment efforts, many of which are focused on enhancing the livelihoods of both mainstream and disadvantaged populations. This programming is directly or indirectly relevant to workforce development, livelihoods, and economic strengthening; economic growth; rural development; economic empowerment of women and girls; and outcomes for other at-risk and vulnerable populations as well as other areas of interest to USAID.