Our Work

YouLead

For Students

YouLead improves career counseling in Sri Lanka to make it more in line with the market, so that young people have in-demand jobs and skills. YouLead ensures that high-quality, market-oriented career counseling is equally available to groups that have historically been left out of these services, including rural youth, girls and young women, and ethnic minorities.

For Teachers and Institutions

Working closely with key government ministries and private and public training institutes, YouLead takes a market-driven approach to designing and improving educational and vocational training curriculum and helps develop master trainers and counselors.

Follow Our Work

In collaboration with the Sri Lankan Tourism Skills Committee, YouLead developed “Tourism Workforce Competitiveness Roadmap 2018-2023” which charts out the critical and practical measures the tourism sector in Sri Lanka must undertake to support youth employment and enhance the sector’s contribution to the country’s economic growth. The full report can be found here.
The Youth Labour Market Assessment of 2018 builds on the primary research undertaken by YouLead and partner Verité Research. The assessment presents the key findings and recommendations that are pertinent to the private sector, the donor community and TVET training providers on the factors contributing to a youth skills gap vs. workforce requirements in Sri Lanka. The full assessment can be found here.

Entrepreneurship Curricula

You can find the individual books by clicking on each link below:

Trainee Workbook 1
Trainee Workbook 2
Trainee Workbook 3
Trainee Workbook 4
Trainer Guide 1
Trainer Guide 2
Trainer Guide 3
Trainer Guide 4

Skilled and Resilient Migrant Workers Project (SRMW)

Funded by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), IESC is implementing the $1.5 million Skilled and Resilient Migrant Workers Project (SRMW). SRMW is designed to make overseas employment safer and more rewarding by providing better occupational information and by increasing the skill levels of Sri Lankans going abroad for work. It will also help reintegrate returning workers by assessing their capabilities and linking them to employment and entrepreneurship opportunities in Sri Lanka. With more than 50,000 migrant workers returning to Sri Lanka due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the SRMW project comes at a very critical time as many returnees have very few employment prospects. To deliver support to Sri Lankan migrant workers and civil society organizations working with migrants, SRMW will leverage the counseling, vocational skills development, and entrepreneurship support mechanisms built by YouLead.

Tourism Resilience in Sri Lanka

Funded by the European Union (EU) and USAID, the Tourism Resilience Project is supporting the recovery and resilience of Sri Lanka’s tourism industry. To build a sustainable, innovative, and resilient tourism ecosystem, the project is (1) retaining jobs and small businesses through the provision of small grants and technical assistance; (2) supporting sustainability and innovation through the development of new and diversified tourism products; and (3) building small and medium enterprises that are aligned to those tourism products and better able to compete in the changing tourism landscape. The Tourism Resilience Project works in coordination with YouLead to contribute to the overarching goals of employment and enterprise development.

Summary

YouLead improves technical and vocational education and training and increases the employability of young people in Sri Lanka. YouLead creates a more skilled and flexible workforce through activities that support and strengthen students, teachers, and institutions. Please read our most recent newsletter here.

Key Results Achieved to Date

By the end of 2020, YouLead had achieved the following results:

19,160 young Sri Lankans with new or better jobs
51,699 youth received career counseling or job placement services
1,484,136 people reached through YouLead outreach activities
60 technical curricula designed or improved
782 new businesses set up
919 career counselors trained to better match students to careers
874 financial institution staff received training related to increasing access to financial services for women and youth run enterprises