GOYN’s Ecosystem Mapping for Youth Employment
The Aspen Institute‘s The Global Opportunity Youth Network, incubated in partnership with GDI, just published its third installment of The Future is Young Learning Series, “Ecosystem Mapping for Youth Employment: Enabling Data-Driven Systems Change”!
GOYN’s ‘The Future is Young’ Learning Series seeks to lift up emerging practices and evidence related to how community Collaboratives can deliver tangible economic opportunities for youth. Previous Learning Briefs have focused on GOYN’s Collaborative Infrastructure model and GOYN’s approach to youth engagement. This Learning Series was developed by the GOYN Global Team, including the Aspen Institute and Global Development Incubator (GDI) in partnership with Catholic Relief Services (CRS).
Global Opportunity Youth Network (GOYN) was founded in response to the fragmentation of youth employment initiatives, with the ultimate goal of increasing access to dignified, productive and sustainable employment and entrepreneurship pathways for “Opportunity Youth” – youth aged 15-29 who are out of school, unemployed or underemployed. GOYN uses a collaborative approach to develop long-term, sustainable strategies that tackle the underlying causes of youth unemployment rather than its symptoms, leading to systemic change.
Ecosystem mapping constitutes the foundation of GOYN’s strategy in a community. Through the ecosystem mapping process, GOYN builds a detailed picture of the youth employment ecosystem in the community: size of the Opportunity Youth population, relevant stakeholders to engage, existing assets and services, gaps to fill and opportunities to leverage. This information, most of which is usually not available from public sources at this hyper-local level, enables GOYN and its partners to understand the long-term changes required to increase economic opportunities for young people in the community.
GOYN’s ecosystem mapping methodology was developed in partnership with GOYN’s global partners Accenture and GDI and builds on the experiences of all GOYN communities. Ecosystem mapping is a collaborative process that involves Opportunity Youth and other community stakeholders in data collection and analysis as much as possible. Findings are presented and discussed in community-wide workshops, and used to inform GOYN’s strategy for the community. This ensures that GOYN’s strategy is both grounded in data and evidence, and the product of a broad consensus between Opportunity Youth and other stakeholders. Importantly, ecosystem mapping is not a one-off exercise. Rather, GOYN and its partners continuously collect data and evidence on the ecosystem to support learning, guide interventions and track the progress being made.