An evaluation of the KAB project Phase I in Palestine was done by Mr. Chris Weinmann accompanied by Ms. Rania Bikhazi, Enterprise Development Specialist.

The evaluation started in Amman where a meeting was held with the KAB Regional Key Facilitator, Mr. Samih Jaber, who was the lead expert working on the KAB project. Mr. Jaber gave a detailed presentation of the activities he conducted under the project namely the TOFs, refresher courses, and the NKF workshop. He also clarified the specificities of the teachers’ certification process in Palestine which included attending the NKF workshop, a written test on the KAB content and the delivery of a full TOF under ILO monitoring.

Over 3 days, Mr. Weinmann and Ms. Bikhazi held meetings with the MoL and the MoEHE. They met with the Minister of Labour who spoke highly of the KAB programme as a means to bridge the gap between vocational education and the labour market needs. Follow-up meetings were held with the National KAB Coordinator Mr. Abdullah Al Silawi and the 5 recently certified KAB National Key Facilitators (NKFs).

The NKFs highlighted the need to review the pre and post tests of the KAB programme, simplify it and train the teachers on how to analyze the results. They also focused on the need to provide KAB teachers with incentives in order to motivate them and keep up their enthusiasm.

A meeting was held with the Director General of Technical Education at the MoEHE who also expressed the Ministry’s full support of the programme which will be rolled out nationally starting January 2011. He also stressed on the need to involve the administration and principals of schools and colleges to ensure full understanding of the programme and the provision of the needed support to the teachers.

A long meeting was held with the National KAB Coordinator under the MoEHE and 5 out of the 8 potential NKFs. The latter raised a number of issues namely:

• · Who can assess the business plans submitted by students?
• · Analysis of the pre and post questionnaires
• · Who will assess the KAB impact once the MoEHE will nationalize?
• · Incentives for teachers and NKFs who will train other teachers.

A number of success stories were presented to the evaluators such as newly opened coffee shops, furniture shops and car mechanics especially in the Hebron area.

Mr. Weinmann also held additional meetings with UNDP, DFID to get to know the portfolio of private sector and SME development initiatives in Palestine along with a meeting with the previous KAB coordinator.

This report is an attempt to report back on the major findings from 8 tracer studies that were carried out in 8 countries under an SDC funded project, as well as provide some insights on lessons learned and recommendations on the tools and process used to carry out these assessments. This is to help future similar initiatives in KAB and other entrepreneurship education programmes. The key question was to find out what happened to KAB participants 2 or 3 years after graduation and how does their school-to-work transition and current employment situation compare to peers who did not take the course. The research project however did not look more into detail at the impact the programme had had on their first beneficiaries, i.e. the trainers and teachers trained.

On 9-10 December 2010, the Youth Employment Network (YEN) will host its third annual Evaluation Clinic in Beirut, Lebanon. The Clinic will be organized as a side event immediately following the Arab Urban Development Institute Child Protection Initiative (AUDI CPI) conference “Children &Youth in the MENA Region: Towards Unleashing their Potentials” from 6-8 December. The Clinic will provide a venue for evaluation specialists to collaborate with youth employment project teams for the development of impact evaluation plans. The 2-day event will include a series of interactive consultation sessions, lectures from renowned evaluation experts and the launch of a series of cutting edge impact evaluations with large potential to build the evidence base for effective youth employment project design and delivery.

Learning will be facilitated through the application of evaluation principles to youth entrepreneurship projects in the process of designing impact evaluations: so called “live case studies”. The live case studies that have been selected include:

1. Silatech and Al Amal’s Microfinance Bank – Yemen
2. International Youth Foundation’s YOUTH:WORK project - Jordan
3. Education for Employment Foundation’s SME project – Egypt
4. INJAZ project - Lebanon
   
   

The theme for this year’s Clinic is “Youth Entrepreneurship”. Recently, entrepreneurship programmes have been receiving increasing attention from governments, donors and multilateral agencies as an alternative job creation strategy. Given the limited absorptive capacities of existing formal labour markets in the developing world, promotion of youth entrepreneurship and self-employment is one of the few feasible options to create employment opportunities both in the informal and formal economy. Nevertheless, the evidence to support positive impact of entrepreneurship schemes is extremely weak. The Clinic seeks to assist youth entrepreneurship projects implement successful impact evaluations and disseminate the findings that come out.

From 22-24 November 2010, the Youth Employment Network (YEN) will host its second annual Evaluation Clinic in Nairobi, Kenya. The Clinic will provide a venue for evaluation specialists to collaborate with youth entrepreneurship project teams for the development of impact evaluations plans. The 3-day event will include a series of interactive “consultation” sessions, lectures from renowned evaluation experts and the launch of a series of cutting edge impact evaluations. Collaborating with YEN on the delivery of the Clinic include International Initiative for Impact Evaluations (3ie), Innovation for Poverty Action (IPA), International Centre for Research on Woman (ICRW),Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA), Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (JPAL) and the World Bank.

The Clinic is delivered as part of the Fund for Evaluation in Youth Employment. The Fund provides technical and financial support to youth entrepreneurship projects based on a competitive selection of proposals (more information on the Fund is available here). In the first selection stage, qualified proposals that are selected for the shortlist will been invited to act as “live case studies” for the Clinic. In the second selection stage, shortlisted proposals will be asked to submit full evaluation plans from which the best ones will receive grants for conducting their impact evaluation. The shortlisted projects that will act as “live case studies” during the Clinic will be announced on late September 2010.

The theme for this year’s Clinic is “Youth Entrepreneurship”. The geographic area for targeting is Sub-Saharan Africa. Recently, entrepreneurship programmes have been receiving increasing attention from governments, donors and multilateral agencies as an alternative job creation strategy. Given the limited absorptive capacities of existing formal labour markets in the developing world, promotion of youth entrepreneurship and self-employment is one of the few feasible options to create employment opportunities both in the informal and formal economy. Nevertheless, the evidence to support positive impact of entrepreneurship schemes is extremely weak. The Clinic seeks to assist youth entrepreneurship projects implement successful impact evaluations and disseminate the findings that come out.