Positive youth development

Bersama creates learning opportunities that prepare young people for healthy and productive relationship at home, at school, in business and in the workplace.

Bersama creates learning opportunities that prepare young people for healthy and productive relationship at home, at school, in business and in the workplace. For us, agency is at the heart of asset-building. Participants are influencers, co-learners and co-designers of programs.Our capacity building approaches have allowed for girls to take on increasing leadership and mentorship roles and ultimately ended with girls facilitating lessons. We keep participation high by developing assets that are relevant for the age, situation and life-stage of young people. For us, assets can cover technical skills (such as germinating seeds, reading), learning skills (such as self-control and reflection) and transferable skills (such as communication and problem-solving).  

We see the accumulation of different types and quantities of assets as foundational to achieving strong relationships, health, earning and educational aspirations. For this reason, we find imaginative ways to imbue all of our technical content–—financial, sexual reproductive health, entrepreneurship and even farming with learning and transferable skills. Young people practice skills through a range of relevant and creative methods such as “the boyfriend game,” to create your own adventure stories, and community-facing projects.

The importance of asset development is widely recognized, and we have worked with ministries of education, after-school programs, employability programs, employers, TVET institutions, and private sector firms to identify feasible and sustainable entry points. for soft skills development.

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Project 1

Youth agro-business in Liberia

In Liberia, it wasn’t common for young people to rank farming as “one of the worst livelihoods” and see it as a last-resort activity. Indeed, young people want modern skills and relate these to cities not to rural and farming communities. This prejudice pushed young people away from the modern agro-business services that the LAUNCH program provided as well as denied young people the opportunity to fully participate in the rural economy. We needed to figure how to attract young people to modern agricultural production and agro-business in a way that could meet the needs of young people for immediate earning, higher earning power and skill-upgrading.

Our positive youth development approach supported young people to learn about agro-business by doing agro-business. Through a carefully sequenced package of activities including project-based learning, individual grants and coaching we helped young people invest their time in something they had dismissed as well as earn while they learned.

Beyond the immediate improvements in earning, these activities helped young people and their families make it through the ebola crisis.

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Project 2

“Brac realized that “seeking work” and “keeping work” skills were just as important. “

Project 2

Enriched a large vocational training program in Bangladesh

Technical and vocational programs offer young people a chance to develop the skills required for a particular job. That said, Brac realized that “seeking work” and “keeping work” skills were just as important. These are skills related to the grit, problem-solving and negotiation it takes to land a job and manage the many challenges that come with it. To bring these skills to life, we supported Brac to integrate this type of training in their programming including equipping Brac trainers with skills in facilitation and learner-centered methodologies.

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Project 2