Partnering to Unlock Youth Employment: Q&A with Dr. Mona Mourshed, founding CEO of Generation

Jobs are the best way to end poverty and give people hope, dignity, and a better future. That’s why the World Bank Group is changing the way we do things—ensuring that all our operations have a clear line of sight to employment. With more than a billion young people entering the labor market in the next decade, the world needs more jobs than ever before. But we can’t do it alone.

We sat down with Dr. Mona Mourshed, the founding CEO of Generation: You Employed, a global employment nonprofit that trains and places adults into new careers. Her work centers on a simple conviction: everyone should have access to a good job and income that can help them and their families have a better life. The right jobs, paired with the right support and skills, have the power to change lives. Generation’s goals are aligned with the World Bank Group’s mission to create more jobs to end poverty and boost shared prosperity on a livable planet.

Read and watch our interview with Dr. Mona Mourshed to learn more about Generation’s mission and how the World Bank Group can partner together to tackle the jobs challenge.

Also check out Dr. Mourshed's blog post and World Bank Group Leaders' Speaker Series talk.

WBG: Today we're talking about young people entering the world of work. I'm here with Dr. Mona Mourshed, CEO of a global nonprofit network that enables people to achieve economic mobility and a better life.

Mona, thank you so much for joining us. Can you please tell us how are you supporting young people to enter the world of work?

Dr. Mona Mourshed: At Generation we work now across 17 countries and 40 professions, to train and place people into new careers. What we seek to do is to take an unemployed person within 3 to 6 months, get them trained and skilled for a new career, get them on the job, so that they can start earning for their families and for themselves.

We have a 7-step methodology at Generation. We begin by pre-confirming job vacancies with employers. We now work with 22,000 employers across the world.

Then we recruit our learners, who then go through a six-to-sixteen-week profession specific program that is activity based. It gives them the technical skills, behavioral skills, and mindsets that they need to perform the entry-level role at a high level.

In parallel, we offer them social supports. And then once they complete the program, they interview with our employers, and then once they are on their job, we are tracking their employment, income and well-being up to five years post-program.

They've now earned $2 billion in wages since we started our programming 10 years ago.

WBG: That is really impressive and a fantastic result. Can you tell us, Mona, how you are partnering with the World Bank Group?

Dr. Mona Mourshed: In India, we are working with national and state government in a public-private partnership, government in a public-private partnership. And the World Bank actually co-funded our first government pilot in India. And so we were able to both support in the changing of how the government reimburses training providers, so that it focuses on job placement and job retention above and beyond just training and graduation alone.

And we also supported training providers to learn how to deliver the 7 steps of our methodology. And so within a period of months, the training providers went from having job placement rates of 25 percent to having job placement rates of 80 plus percent.

WBG: Mona, it seems like you guys are doing incredible work. How can we scale this work up even further?

Dr. Mona Mourshed: So when you look across the world, billions of dollars annually are spent by public sector and social sector on vocational and workforce programming. But employment rates are typically quite low, and it’s because training and employment are often disconnected, regretfully.

And so we believe that there can be much more gain by governments and social sector across the world, by changing the way vocational and workforce programming is delivered, by changing the way vocational and workforce programming is delivered, by changing the way vocational and workforce programming is delivered, so that it’s consistent with these 7 steps, and that the data is tracked systematically.

You know at Generation, we track graduates at three months, six months, a year and then annually up to five years, and that tells us whether or not they are achieving economic mobility. It tells us whether they continue to be employed. And so if much more of vocational and workforce programming was connected to employer hiring needs, and the data is tracked systematically, we can get much more benefit in terms of economic mobility, for young people across the world and dignity for them and for their families.

WBG: Fantastic. Thank you so much. I'm so excited about this organization and we will be continuing to root for you. Thank you again for joining us today Mona.

Editor's Note: This transcription has been edited for clarity.