Banyan Global is pleased to announce its new five-year Honduras Workforce Development (WFD) Activity under the United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID) YouthPower Implementation indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity contract. The WFD Activity targets at-risk youth living in the five Honduran municipalities most affected by violence and crime, and it is an important part of the Alliance for Prosperity of the Northern Triangle that Vice President Joe Biden announced in late 2014. Through this activity, Banyan Global will identify and establish strategically positioned pathways, partnerships, and instruments targeting at-risk youth that are caught in the cycle of crime and violence. The WFD Activity’s overall goal is to provide realistic and sustainable opportunities for employment, thereby increasing the protective factors for at-risk youth in Honduras’s high-crime areas.

The WFD Activity’s goals are to

• increase access to high-quality, comprehensive workforce-development services for at-risk youth, with an emphasis on youth who qualify for secondary prevention services (such as youth with multiple risk factors)
• increase the Instituto Nacional de Formación Profesional’s (the National Institute for Professional Training) institutional capacity to deliver market-driven, high-quality services
• increase access to workforce-related services, including income-generating activities, for youth who have been in conflict with the law, such as former gang members

Banyan Global will establish offices in Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula to support program activities, including strengthening and expanding current workforce programs, launching  programs in underserved communities, and strengthening ties between the private sector and workforce-development implementers to ensure that training responds to market needs and at-risk youth have the highest rate of job placement and career success. It is expected that by the close of the project in 2021, multiple institutions will be working in high-violence communities and they will be capable of providing high-quality, fully integrated vocational training programs. Additionally, thousands of at-risk youth will have new jobs.