Project to Promote Workplace-Based Training for Vulnerable Youth in Argentina
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Project Noemi is helped bridge the skills gap in Argentina by increasing the number and quality of on-the-job training programs, such as internships and apprenticeships, while ensuring these opportunities are accessible to the youth who need them the most. The project supported improvements in the legal and policy framework surrounding youth training, raising awareness about the benefits of work-based training, documenting and disseminating good apprenticeship practices in Argentina, and helping both public and private sector youth training programs to increase their effectiveness.
The Problem
In 2014, the International Labor Organization estimated 21.3 percent of youth ages 15 to 24 were unemployed in Argentina, more than twice the national unemployment rate. Young people from disadvantaged segments of the population are more likely to be engaged in child labor, perform hazardous work, and abandon school before completing high school. At-risk youth in Argentina are often unable to access work-based training opportunities, including apprenticeships.
Our Strategy
This project brought together key government agencies, employers, workers’ organizations, and civil society to collaborate on establishing and expanding work-based training programs for youth, such as apprenticeships, with a focus on including vulnerable and marginalized youth. To do this, the project identified improvements that can be made to laws and policies that would help businesses launch quality work training programs, providing tools and technical knowledge to employers and workers’ organizations to help them implement work-based training programs, and helping existing job training programs reach young people who are at high risk of becoming engaged in hazardous activities.
The project focused on building the capacity of national-level stakeholders, as well as that of local organizations currently implementing promising youth training models in the Mar del Plata, San Martin District, La Matanza District, Tucuman, and Santa Fe areas.
Results
- Between 2017 and 2022, the Noemi Project designed a model of educational workplace-based training for socially vulnerable teens. The model includes educational access strategies for adolescents who had dropped out of school or who were at risk of doing so, socio-emotional (or “soft”) skills development both in schools as well as at employer sites and in neighborhoods, and a methodology for companies and institutions to use for internships and apprenticeships.
- The Noemi Project implemented this model across four different provinces (Buenos Aires, Mar del Plata, Santa Fe, and Tucumán) and has successfully integrated the model in 16 schools, 22 internship providers, and 12 social organizations.
- Responding to the education crisis created by COVID-19, the Noemi project trained eight tutors to promote the educational continuity of students who were having difficulty with virtual school. The tutors encouraged the re-engagement of 126 students, who received additional soft skills training. The tutors also assisted students in preparing practical education projects, a way to experience virtual workplace-based training. The incorporation of tutors was so successful that the Director of Technical Education in the Department of Technical Education of Tucuman expressed his interest in replicating the approach in all schools in the province.
- Grantee:
- Desarrollo y Autogestión (DYA)
- Implementing Partners:
- and Solidarity (SES) Foundation; La Salle Foundation, Education, Sustainability
- Contact Information:
- GlobalKids@ILAB.dol.gov / Office of Child Labor, Forced Labor, and Human Trafficking (OCFT)
- Tags:
- Child Labor
- Apprenticeships
- Awareness
- Capacity Building
- Education
- Youth Employment
