Intervention (Hidden)
The sector specific training will be carried out over 4 weeks. In the first 2-3 days, participants are presented with the sectoral options available for training in their state (e.g. construction, automotive, ICT, clothing and textiles, hospitality etc.) after which beneficiaries are expected to choose a sector.
Entrepreneurship training will be carried out over 4 weeks and will cover different aspects of starting and running a business such as generating a business idea, writing a business plan, financial planning, etc.
Life skills training will be carried out over 10 days and will cover self-management skills (e.g. critical thinking, time and stress management), general social skills (e.g. communication and negotiation, conflict management, leadership development), and drug resistance skills.
The teaching techniques are through Lectures, Class Discussion, Groups Brainstorming, Role Plays, Situation Analysis and Case Studies, Debates, Story Telling and Exercises.
Life Skills Training is an innovation to how the government traditionally delivers youth employment training and while they have anecdotal evidence that providing socio-emotional skills are useful, they’ve requested rigorous quantitative evidence to inform future programming.
Apprenticeships are by far the most widespread skills development channel throughout Africa (Adams, Johansson, & Razmara, 2013; Franz, 2016). Yet despite the ubiquity of informal apprenticeships, there is very little evidence on their efficacy. They are often informal, with varying length, quality and cost. S4J attempts to formalize these arrangements by directly placing beneficiaries with vetted public and private sector master craftsmen in the various fields, and tracking beneficiaries’ attendance to the internship. Since even after vocational and entrepreneurship classroom training, on-the-job training and experience is necessary for the beneficiaries to be able to successfully start an enterprise, the Nigerian government is interested in better understand the additional impact of the facilitated apprenticeship/internship program they are providing through S4J.
The impact evaluation will also include a survey of trainers to examine whether trainer quality s such as cognitive skills, business size, training experience and/or business performance determine the impact of an internship on beneficiaries.