Youthtown

The Youth Employability Programme (YEP) gives 14-24 year-olds the skills and confidence to transition into the world of work. It is highly regarded nationally as an employability programme of great worth and impact, that empowers rangatahi to gain the insight, confidence and skills to get work, keep work and thrive in their careers.

YEP equips young people with the seven key employability skills employers regard as essential to making a successful start in the workplace, retaining employment and building a career.

The programme is designed for all young people, particularly those transitioning directly to the workforce from school or training, as well as those returning to the workforce.

The Auckland programme was evaluated by ImpactLab and achieved a Social Return of Investment of $4.20, which means for every dollar invested, the programme returns $4.20 in social return.

What is the Youth Employability Programme?

The main focus of the programme is the development of the seven key employability skills that employers say they feel are essential to make a successful start in the workforce and establish a career.

The programme is composed of two main components:

Skill-building workshops
Work experience

The practical workshops are delivered by a skilled facilitator and are designed to draw on the student's ideas and experiences in order to position them at the centre of their own learning.

The voluntary work and work placements provide students with the opportunity to get, develop and practice their employability skills in a safe and structured context and connect with their local community.

The generic programme includes:

18 - 20 hours of skill-building workshops
10 - 20 hours of community service
80 hours of work experience with a local business
Skills based assessment

Youthtown recently had the Auckland YEP delivery assessed by ImpactLab.

ImpactLab’s team combine hard data with the human stories to determine social impact. Using their GoodMeasure tool, they apply a consistent measurement framework across the organisations they evaluate to enable fair comparison of social impact.

ImpactLab quantify the social impact, in dollar terms, that a programme achieves for participants over their lifetime: this is called the social value.

The social value calculation helps to understand how a programme or intervention helps change lives for the better.

ImpactLab combine the social value with information regarding the cost to deliver the programme to calculate a programme’s social return on investment (SROI).

From the information provided by Youthtown, about how YEP works, ImpactLab were able to understand the change journey that the participants undergo. From this change journey, the below outcomes map was generated.

The main areas of social value that YEP is seen to directly contribute to are shown in the GoodMeasure results map.

Once this social value was calculated, the social return on investment that the programme delivers was calculated, utilising the programme operating costs in Auckland.

ImpactLab found that within Auckland, the social return on investment for YEP was $4.20. Which means that for every dollar invested in the programme, $4.20 is returned in social value.

Given the difficulties Auckland faced in 2021, with lockdown and the impact that had on participant numbers and completion rates, ImpactLab felt that the SROI could be even higher in other years.

What we're doing to support YEP:

Developing the programme and its resources to help build employability skills in young people.
Supporting YEP providers to deliver quality programmes through national and regional networks.
Training YEP facilitators to enable more young people to become work ready.
Encouraging the business community to support youth employability, connecting rangatahi to work experience opportunities.
Administrating the programme nationally.