Directorates
·	Director General's Office
·	Data Development
·	Strategic Evaluations
·	Partnership and Continuous Evaluations
Publications
·	Evaluation Reports
·	Evaluation Briefs
·	Labour Market Development Agreement Series
·	Lessons Learned Series
·	Evaluation Tool Kit Series
·	Evaluation Forum Newsletter
·	From Theory To Practice

What lessons can be extracted from the review of material on Canadian and international experience with youth programs? As a starting point, a number of key messages deserve to be highlighted.

1. In Canada, the evidence strongly indicates that labour market success is correlated with educational attainment. Over the past 15 years, high school drop-outs are increasingly worse off; those who have higher degrees are increasingly better-off. Educational attainment is correlated with labour market success because the skills learned in school are vocationally relevant and because the possession of higher degrees implies the possession of other qualities – intelligence, motivation, persistence and the capacity for hard work – that are useful in the labour market. Within the school system, greater effort needs to be placed on providing more clearly articulated pathways in and out of formal education, trying to reduce the stigma attached to vocational training, and providing innovative opportunities for young people to combine work and schooling.

2. Even when programs produce positive results, their impacts are generally modest in size. Therefore, in launching any initiative, it is important not to oversell it. The fact that a program has only a small impact does not necessarily mean that it is not worth-while. It may still be cost-effective – producing a positive return on the investment of public funds – and may be critical to turning around the lives of particular young people.

3. Young people's needs are many and varied. Therefore, no single intervention can be expected to deal with the full range of problems. Inevitably, a range of programs and services has to be called on; there will not be a single solution. The potential clientele for any program, even one designed with a specified target group – like youth – in mind, faces a wide range of problems and, consequently, they have a wide diversity of needs. This heterogeneity of client needs means that what works for some people will not work for others. In examining program effectiveness, attention needs to be paid to variations among sub-groups – for example, by gender, ethnicity, age, rural or urban location, length of unemployment, educational attainment, and family income. Knowing for which particular groups a program works best allows the program to be more appropriately targeted.

4. Most effective programs for young people provide sustained adult contact. The roles played by adults varies from program to program – teacher, mentor, case manager, counsellor, supervisor. The key factors are that there be ongoing contact with an adult over an extended period of time and that it includes elements of monitoring, as well as support. In some cases, the approach adopted has been a nurturing one aimed at supporting the young person's overall development; other programs use "tough love" and stress the penalties associated with failure to meet program requirements. The overall goal is to provide the participants with structure and the motivation to do well.

5. The modest program impacts mentioned above can be the result of two very different targeting strategies. A program can make a modest improvement in the situation of many people whose employment problems are not too serious (and for whom, therefore, the scope for achieving sizeable impacts is limited). Or it can try to help the seriously disadvantaged who face multiple barriers to employment. In this case, those who benefit will likely benefit a great deal. But many participants will drop out and many others will not succeed despite the intervention; therefore, the average impact will be modest. It is important to decide whether it is more important to provide broad coverage with a program or to provide help to those who need it the most.

6. The most effective strategy for disadvantaged out-of-school youth would be one that is multifaceted – combining a training component with strong links to the employer community, more formal training linked to on-the-job training and work experience, and, for the most disadvantaged, job search assistance and transitional wage subsidies.

7. For young people who do drop out of school, it is important to intervene as soon as possible after school leaving. The later the intervention, the more likely it will be that the self-reinforcing dynamics of low education and few skills, chronic unemployment, poverty, welfare dependency, and declining self-esteem will make the problem almost insurmountable.

8. Better preparation for the labour market increases the probability that young people will obtain and retain employment – but only if jobs exist. Supply-side measures cannot, on their own, solve youth labour market problems. The state of the economy – the availability of jobs – is an important determinant of program effectiveness. Parallel strategies on the demand-side, to ensure the availability of and access to employment opportunities, must be part of any coherent set of labour market policies. In this respect, government needs to engage the private sector in the provision of job opportunities for youth. HRDC's Stay-in-School Initiative provides an example of how a social marketing initiative can increase public awareness and build pressure for change. A similar approach might be part of a larger effort to enlist employers in a youth job opportunity program.

In addition to these general comments a number of important lessons can be drawn concerning specific types of interventions.