Building on a review of integrated youth workforce development (WfD) and family planning and reproductive health (FP/RH) interventions,  this study, commissioned by USAID through YouthPower Action, investigates two major research questions:

1) Does integrating WfD and FP/RH components facilitate stronger workforce and FP/RH
outcomes than a WfD intervention alone?

2) How does integration take place? What are the associated challenges, best practices and
solutions?

YouthPower Action carried out this study in the context of the Skills to Succeed (S2S) program, implemented by Save the Children and three local partners in the slums of Dhaka, Bangladesh, with youth (16–24 years old) program participants who have at least an eighth-grade education. Over about a year, each cohort of youth goes through the following training modules: (Quarter 1) intensive employability and soft skills training; (Quarter 2) training in technical field; and (Quarters 3–4) opportunity to work with a mentor. For a randomly selected subsample of the youth clubs, additional Family Planning and Reproductive Health (FP/RH) content was integrated into the employability skills curriculum, as part of the randomized controlled trial design.

The study design included two major components: 1) a panel cluster-randomized impact evaluation with two cohorts of youth and 2) a qualitative process evaluation. The impact evaluation investigates research question 1, with the objective of determining if improved workforce and FP/RH outcomes are observed among youth participants in the integrated WfD and FP/RH study arm compared with youth participants in the workforce-only study arm. The process evaluation investigates research question 2, with the goal of understanding how the FP/RH and WfD components were integrated, what challenges integration brought up, and how these challenges were addressed.