Impact Evaluation - Program Jóvenes con Porvenir

Jóvenes con Porvenir (Youth with Hope) is a voca,onal training program in Zapopan, a municipality in the metropolitan area of Guadalajara, Mexico. The program offers free training courses for out-of-school youth aged 15 - 30 who live in the municipality. The goal of the program is to promote employment among young people, encourage school reinser,on, and reduce social exclusion and vulnerability to organized crime. 

In order to tackle the social and economic issues affec,ng the youth in Zapopan, the program Jóvenes con Porvenir offers scholarships to young man and women not enrolled in school, so they can a^end voca,onal training courses regardless of their employment status. 

The impact evaluation aims to estmate the effect of the program in different aspects of the beneficiaries’ professional and personal lives. More specifically, it evaluates the impact of the program on participants’ employment and educational outcomes, access to professional networks, and weakening of social bonds to gang groups. In addition, it evaluates whether the program changed students’ expectations of the future.

Policy Recommendations
The results of the impact evaluation and the high satisfaction reported by the program’s beneficiaries suggest that it is convenient to expand the program to a larger scale, either to the metropolitan area of Guadalajara, to the state of Jalisco, or nation-wide. The most substantive impacts of the program were found among youth living in areas of medium and high levels of marginalization, and among participants under 23 years of age. Therefore, the design of the program can be enhanced by increasing efforts on targeting these groups of beneficiaries and reducing their attrition rates. For example, the program could increase the financial support for transportation given to these participants. Additionally, the program can be strengthened by including other evidenced-based components for improving employment outcomes amongst former program participants, such as social skills training and professional internships. Finally, it is important to create links and collaborate with other existing complementary youth programs aimed at developing resilience and pro-social behaviors, especially among those at risk of getting involved in gangs.