The Demand-Driven Training Toolkit: A Resource for Aligning Youth Employment Programs with Labor Market Demand

Join Making Cents International, the Youth Employment Funders Group (YEFG), Educate!, the Rwanda Education Board, as we explore YEFG’s What Works in Soft Skills Development for Youth Employment and examine a program that demonstrates how soft skills learning can be effectively integrated within formal education systems as a way to achieve larger-scale shifts in youth soft skills acquisition. The speakers will share challenges, ways to co-create skills development processes with teachers and key stakeholders, and best practices for bringing soft skills development into formal education and highlight Educate!’s experience in supporting the integration of soft skills training into Uganda and Rwanda’s national curriculum. Special emphasis will be on how to deal with both the will and skill necessary to have reforms actually take root in an everyday classroom.

Discussant:

Nancy Taggart
Senior Youth & Workforce Advisor
USAID

Nancy Taggart is a Senior Youth & Workforce Advisor at USAID and member of the Steering Committee of the Youth Employment Funders Group (YEFG). She has over fifteen years of experience managing international education, youth workforce and gender programs. Prior to USAID, she worked at Education Development Center as the Youth Technical Team Leader and Project Director for several youth workforce programs. From 2010-2012, she served as Deputy Director of the EQUIP3 Program, which supported youth education and training projects. Previously, she served as Project Director at the International Youth Foundation for youth programs in Morocco and Tanzania. She also worked for the Academy for Educational Development where she managed a project to develop strategies for increasing female participation within Cisco’s Networking Academy Training Program in developing countries. She holds an MA from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and a BA in History from Northwestern University.

Speakers:

Boris Bulayev
Co-Founder and Executive Director
Educate!

Boris Bulayev is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of Educate!. Under his leadership, Educate! has grown to 200 staff and over 300 Mentors, reaching over 360,000 youth broadly and 26,000 intensively across 600 schools in Uganda and Rwanda, and advised on integration of skills-based education into Uganda and Rwanda’s national education systems. The organization has received much acclaim for its work, including the 2015 WISE award, recognition as one of 14 global case studies on scaling education by Brookings Institution, and recognition from Bill Gates. Before jumping into Educate! full-time, Boris worked at startup incubator Loeb Enterprises. Boris is a recipient of the 2011 Grinnell College Young Innovator for Social Justice Prize, and a two-time Forbes Top 30 Under 30 Social Entrepreneur.

Antoine Mutsinzi
Acting Director of the Teacher Development and Training Unit of the Rwanda Education Board
Rwanda Ministry of Education

Antoine Mutsinzi serves as the Acting Director of the Teacher Development and Training Unit of the Rwanda Education Board - the implementing arm of Rwanda's Ministry of Education. In this role, Mr. Mutsinzi oversees nationwide training of teachers, teacher trainers, school-based mentors, education officers, and other integral players in the education sector at the pre-primary, primary, and secondary levels. Mr. Mutsinzi guides, and collaborates with, a plethora of development partners who are supporting Rwanda's competency-based education reform. He is an ardent promoter of peer learning, and has had a key role in creating numerous tools and projects to increase school-based in-service teacher training, and knowledge exchange among secondary school teachers. Prior to this role, he was a secondary school mathematics and physics teacher, and a teacher trainer. His academic and professional excellence were recognized with the award of a scholarship under the JICA Training Program, through which he completed his Master's degree in Japan, focusing on how to improve science and math education. He is also an active member of the community, having served as the president of the Nyarugenge district council, which includes the city centre of Kigali, Rwanda's capital.

Donnalee Donaldson
Rwanda Country Director
Educate!

Donnalee Donaldson is an educator and lawyer from Montego Bay, Jamaica and is currently Educate!’s Rwanda Country Director. She joined Educate! in order to pursue her interest in working on systemic change in the education sector. Before joining Educate! she worked for Kepler where she helped launch two university campuses in three years, including Rwanda's first in a refugee camp. Before, Donnalee was a litigation attorney for the City of New York's Law Department and remains a member of the New York State Bar. She holds a B.A. from Seton Hall University and a J.D. from the Emory University School of Law. Additionally, she was one of Ashoka's inaugural Changemaker Scholars in 2016.

Annie Alcid
Deputy Chief of Party, Akazi Kanoze 2
Education Development Center

Annie Alcid is the Deputy Chief of Party of the Mastercard Foundation funded Akazi Kanoze 2 project, which has institutionalized EDC’s Work Ready Now! curriculum in Rwandan secondary schools. Annie has over ten years of experience working in youth and education programming internationally. Previously, she worked at EDC in Washington, D.C. as an M&E Associate, managed education projects for several NGOs in Asia, and served as a Peace Corps volunteer. She has a Master’s Degree from Georgetown University in Global Human Development.