BRIGHT (Breaking Barriers, Improving Girls’ education, Hope and Totality)
Description of Project:
The project aims to provide women and girls with pathways for inclusive and equitable primary education, accelerated learning, and livelihood training that will enable them to have more equal access to livelihood opportunities usually dominated by males.
This market assessment consultancy agreement is a crucial component of the project made to look at the labor market context and provide up-to-date data on the labour market, market driven practical recommendations to inform the organization interventions on livelihood skills development through employability training. Furthermore, the findings will also inform efforts of the project partners in developing competency-based vocational training curriculum and aid in the future programmatic decisions of the organization.
Description of actual services provided by your staff within the assignment:
Mekong Economics implemented the following tasks:
1. Socio-economic profiling of selected beneficiaries: Collect and analyze information about target beneficiaries to provide an overview of the income level, education, work experience and capacities, HHs expenditures, coping mechanisms and financial risks management strategies. It should also provide a clear picture of the challenges and barriers that women and girls are facing in access to vocational and self-employment opportunities in the target area.
2. Market and skill analysis: Assessment of the local market with particular focus on economic opportunities for employment through skills development and enterprise creation.
3. Areas of focus included:
● Identification of gaps and opportunities for market driven skills development and business creation.
● Conduct of overall market opportunity mapping and Identify four economically viable sectors that the most vulnerable people living in project areas are working or offered work opportunities in.
● Value chain analysis/mapping: Produce value chain map of key sectors identified and value chain analysis to identify areas of skills development and knowledge transfer that can be improved with regard to the specific value chains.
● An overview of existing financial and business support services (formal/informal) as well as regulatory constraints and opportunities for the economic development in the project target areas
● Ethnic, gender and social exclusion analysis shall be considered into the methodological approach, and collection of data will be disaggregated (sex, age, ethnicity), to understand labor sector profiles, challenges and opportunities for all.