Our Work in Youth

Banyan Global’s positive youth development (PYD) approach connects the next generation with their families, schools, and communities to better navigate the opportunities, risks, and challenges of adolescence and young adulthood. Banyan Global’s PYD approach is multisectoral—addressing systemic constraints in a holistic manner that builds assets and skills so that youth can take advantage of opportunities in their environments to accelerate development, stabilize their communities, and meet the global labor-market demand for innovation and growth. Show More

Our youth expertise includes the following:

• Workforce development: We design and implement programming that creates livelihoods and prepares youth for employment. This process includes conducting labor-market analyses, designing training, and mentorship programs that engage youth and build their capacities to meet employment trends. Private-sector partnerships drive our youth-focused workforce development initiatives.
• Vocational technical education: We build the capacity of vocational training institutes and universities to offer market-oriented courses that meet private-sector job requirements. Our approach includes a human-centered design of curriculum with private-sector partners.
• Cross-sectoral PYD programming: We design innovative PYD programming across multiple sectors to build youth’s assets and agency. Our experts lead PYD integration programming in health, agribusiness, trade, education, and many other sectors.
• Youth-led: We engage with youth at all levels to enable their participation in program design, implementation, and evaluation.
• Information, media, and technology: We engage youth through social media and connect them to appropriate advances in technology for networking, information sharing, and communicating messages.
• Youth-inclusive financial services: We develop youth-inclusive financial products, building financial institutions’ capacities to target this underserved population.
• Vulnerable youth: We implement programs to support at-risk youth, including former gang members; migrants; LGBTI youth; youth with disabilities; and married girls, building their self-efficacy.
• Gender and youth: We bring a gender focus to our work with youth, including taking holistic approaches to increase girls’ agency and self-worth to access services and obtain decent employment.