Equipping Youth for Life

Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) in Burundi aims at assisting the internally displaced, refugees (mainly from the Democratic Republic of Congo) and Burundian returnees from Tanzania. Through the Youth Education Pack project (YEP) NRC provides basic skill training, literacy and life skills to war and conflict affected youth who, through displacement and lack of opportunities have had little or no schooling. The project’s main objective is to equip these youth for sustainable livelihoods.

The evaluation’s approach was to involve YEP field staff actively in the whole process, including the elaboration of field work methodology, interviewing techniques, socio-economic progress indicators, result analysis and the formulation of conclusions, recommendations and action plans

The evaluation’s main conclusions show the project’s achievements: a successful launching of a number of vulnerable youth in life and livelihoods, a good-quality training, excellent project staff, but also some areas of concern: insufficient numbers of support staff; not enough preparation of business and organisational aspects, a high drop-out rate with little knowledge about its reasons, a weak project monitoring system, a partnership approach lacking capacity building for possible future hand-over and a lack of permanent focus on sustainability.

The evaluation of the YEP project was carried out during February/March 2008 in order to facilitate the elaboration of an enhanced program lay-out, including information for improved programme design and implementation, and wider lessons to be learned for similar YEP projects in other countries.