The Youth Development Study (YDS) was designed to support the U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID) update to the Yemen country strategy (i.e., the Yemen Programming Approach [YPA]). 1 USAID contracted Social Impact (SI) to conduct a study exploring the challenges, priorities, and opportunities faced by Yemeni youth in relation to the five YPA sectors: (1) health; (2) education; (2) water, sanitation, and hygiene; (4) economic recovery, livelihoods, and agriculture; and (5) governance, peace, and stability. The findings from this study are intended to inform the integration of youth programming principles into the YPA extension, and possibly, into future activity design.

The study was designed to answer five study questions (and one sub-question):

1. What data exist about the condition of youth in Yemen, and what do these data tell us about their needs and how best to serve them?
2. What are the primary challenges, opportunities, and priorities of Yemeni youth?
3. What are the (YPA-relevant) programmatic gaps, cross-sector connections, and potential synergies with other development partners in the youth development sector in Yemen?
4. In what ways can youth development policies and approaches be integrated into USAID activity design to assist in the goal of enabling Yemeni youth to contribute to the rebuilding and development of Yemen?
5. Who are the development partners, implementing partners (IPs), government bodies, and local organizations that serve youth today in Yemen, what models or approaches do they use, and why? What evidence exists about the effectiveness of these models and how do they compare to the international literature on best practices for youth development in conflict and crisis-affected contexts?