Kenya Youth Employment Program: Gender, Grants, Skills, and Nudges

The Kenya Youth Employment and Opportunities Project (KYEOP) is a large program led by the Government of Kenya (GoK) and the World Bank (WB), targeting young women and men with no more than a secondary education who are unemployed or working vulnerable jobs. Youth, and females in particular, face specific constraints when seeking jobs or entrepreneurial success: limited finances, low skills, lack of experience and networks, family obligations, fewer role models, and more. Our team therefore designed a set of complementary interventions specifically targeted to overcome these gendered barriers. We are conducting a major randomized impact evaluation to analyze the combined and isolated effects of providing unconditional cash grants, business development services (BDS) in different formats (traditional classroom, via one-on-one counseling visits, and via flexible self-paced digital means); and behavioral interventions (facilitated peer networks, and aspirations / future self). We would like to evaluate impacts 2-3 years later.