By increasing young people’s access to decent, sustainable, and meaningful economic opportunities -underpinned by appropriate financial and supportive services – the Youth Economic Opportunities (YEO) strives to ensure that this youth bulge becomes a demographic dividend.
YEO is composed of a number of practice areas and important cross-cutting themes. This platform chooses to focus on three distinct practice areas and two cross-cutting interest areas:

• Enterprise development: Supporting entrepreneurs to start and run profitable businesses through training, technical assistance, and inclusive market development activities.
• Financial services: Working with financial institutions, supporting organizations, and regulators to design and deliver financial services and education that respond to the savings, borrowing, and risk mitigation needs of young clients.
• Workforce development: Building the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that youth need to obtain and participate in productive work in partnership with the private sector, community organizations, and educational institutions.
• Gender: Addressing the role that gender plays in shaping economic opportunities, especially for adolescent girls and young women.
• Evaluation & Assessment: Improving the effectiveness, sustainability, and scale of programs by sharing data on what works and what doesn’t, and methodologies for monitoring, evaluation and impact assessment.