TAGAYTAY CITY, March 23, 2022— The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) held a series of events that gathered at least 180 local leaders and organizations from 12 cities in a concerted effort to help out-of-school youth pursue further education, get jobs, or start businesses.
The USAID Opportunity 2.0 Youth Development Alliance (YDA) Summit has been successfully held for partner cities in the Visayas (December 2021), Mindanao (January 2022), and culminated in Luzon (March 2022). The Summits engaged more than 180 local leaders and stakeholders from 12 Philippine cities: Angeles City, Valenzuela City, Quezon City, Legazpi City, Davao City, General Santos City, Cotabato City, Cagayan de Oro City, Cebu City, Tagbilaran City, Zamboanga City, and Isabela City.
Youth Development Alliances or YDAs were introduced in cities through the USAID Opportunity 2.0 program, allowing local actors to be able to focus on out-of-school youth, collaborate more closely, craft more youth-inclusive policies and programs, harmonize activities and services, as well as share and maximize resources.
With the theme ‘Power of Convergence and Partnership for Out-of-School Youth,’ the Summits allowed YDA members from different cities to learn from each other. Here, they shared good practices, discussed common challenges, built networks, and proposed practical solutions, effectively shaping city programs that directly provide results for out-of-school in the Philippines.
“I am happy to share with you that our collaboration has so far reached over 17,000 out-of-school youth from across the country. Hundreds of out-of-school youth have had their access to second-chance education and work readiness training restored. Many are transitioning to further education and connecting to local businesses for jobs or are being supported in their pursuit of micro-enterprises. All of this is being done largely through the work of Youth Development Alliances,” said Dr. Thomas LeBlanc, Director of the Office of Education at USAID Philippines. “The U.S. government will continue to support building strong, sustainable Youth Development Alliances so we can achieve our shared vision of a better tomorrow for the out-of-school youth in the Philippines.”
YDAs, commonly led by City Governments, are composed of government line agencies, local business associations, civil society, universities, college, and training institutions, other youth-serving organizations, and, of course, the youth themselves.#
