Challenge statement
Challenge type: If you are working on multiple challenges, please indicate if this is your "big bet" or "exploratory" challenge.
Please note: we ask you to only submit a maximum of 3 challenges - 1x Big Bet, 2x Exploratory. Each challenge must be submitted individually.
BIG BET
Challenge statement: What is your challenge? (Please answer in specific terms: "Our challenge is that...”.)
Our challenge is that large share of youth, women and others at risk of being left behind are unable to engage in resilient and sustainable livelihoods
Background: What is the history of your challenge? What is causing or driving it? Who is involved? How does the current situation look like? What undesired effects does it produce?
A relatively young working-age group characterizes Maldives' demography. It has entered a unique window of opportunity since the youth population (18-34 years) is forecasted to double in the future. However, the current trends and structures do not contribute towards a promising future. Despite being a Middle-Income Country, the participation of women and youth in the workforce is low. The country is dependent on a large expatriate workforce, especially in the construction and tourism industry. The tourism sector, which is the highest contributor to the country's GDP, tends to employ many expatriates. Even amongst the 47% local workers in the tourism industry, only 3% are local female workers. There is a growing informal sector with women more active than men. Local education offerings do not always match the changing needs of employers. Educational attainment of youth in agriculture, engineering, manufacturing, and construction is low compared to social science, business and law, and education. The disjuncture between the needs of the industries and educational programs feeds into the gaps in the labour market, with young local graduates being continuously marginalized due to a lack of relevant qualifications and experience. The pandemic has exposed existing inequalities and critical needs of these vulnerable groups. A holistic response will need to reduce structural and systemic weaknesses that contribute to these inequalities in the employment landscape. One set of current reforms is geared towards diversifying the economy to create more jobs and increase women's participation in the workforce. With continuing low participation of women and youth in the labour market, there is an urgent need to facilitate inclusive, transparent, and fair interventions in the labour market to ensure successful implementation of these reform efforts. To capture the first demographic dividend, we need to pay more attention to youth and invest in them by improving youth's human capital including gender-equitable policies.
Quantitative evidence: What (official) data sources do you have on this challenge that better exemplifies the importance and urgency of this frontier challenge? You can add text, a link, or a picture.
The Maldives' youth population was projected to reach 240 584 (43%) for 2022, and in 2019 the 31% of the population occupied the age group of 18-35 years (UNFPA and National Bureau of Statistics, 2020). While the country's labour force participation rate is at 60%, the rate for men is much higher at 77% compared to 46% for women (National Bureau of Statistics, 2019). The Labour force participation rate for 15-24 years is low, with 45% for females and 56% for males. Although the labour participation rate is highest for the age groups 25-34 and 35-44, gender parity is lowest for both of these age groups. Accordingly, men's labour participation rate for the age group 25-34 is 91%, while the figure is 55% for women (National Bureau of Statistics, 2020). A large number of young people is out of the labour force because of ill health or disability; 23 percent of males aged 25 to 29 and 27 percent of males aged 30 to 34 reported some level of ill health or disability that prevented them from working, indicating the magnitude of the issue. As per the JobCenter data, about 75 percent of young people who work in the tourism sector and aged 20-30 are experiencing complete income loss, and 39 percent between 21-30 years and 25 percent between 15-20 years are affected with partial income loss. Similarly, 45 percent of those who reported an employment or income impact in the tourism sector were also aged 21-30. Youth aged 18-34 years and women also make up most informal sectors, which is disproportionately highest impacted by the pandemic-induced unemployment (UNDP Maldives, 2020). 72% of informal sector workers are engaged as own account workers, of which 52% are women and men 20% (Maldives Bureau of Statistics and UNDP Maldives, 2022, Informal Sector Survey 2021 | United Nations Development Programme (undp.org)). The prevalence of informal sector employment was highest among women (59%) compared to men (41%) across all age groups (Maldives Bureau of Statistics and UNDP Maldives, 2022, Informal Sector Survey 2021 | United Nations Development Programme (undp.org)). Informal sector engagement in tertiary sector showed an increase from 11% to 32% between pre and post pandemic ((Maldives Bureau of Statistics and UNDP Maldives, 2022, Informal Sector Survey 2021 | United Nations Development Programme (undp.org)).
Qualitative evidence: What weak signals have you recently spotted that characterizes its urgency? Please provide qualitative information that better exemplifies the importance and urgency of this frontier challenge. You can add text, a link, or a picture.
Women taking up jobs or engaging in livelihoods that have been traditionally ‘classified’ as jobs for men. For example, women in the area of cargo transport, bus drivers. People who have lost their jobs, especially in the tourism sector, have resorted to become more independent by starting their own businesses or making use of the knowledge and skills they’ve gained in other jobs. For example, experienced chefs opening restaurants or starting a home-based business.
Value proposition: What added value or unique value proposition is your Accelerator Lab bringing to solving this challenge? Why is it your Lab that needs to work on this challenge and not other actors within UNDP, other stakeholders in the country respectively? Why is it worth investing resources to this challenge?
The Social Innovation Platforms approach has a longer-term view and aspires to set the foundations for a social and economic transformation in the target area of future of work. Powering of a SIP involves key stages of systemaic mapping of key stakeholders, deep listening, collective interpretation, co-creation, co-design, prototyping and scaling. This methodology is quite akin to the way Accelerator Lab’s methodologies and as such involves in-depth exploration, integrated approach to unpack complex development issues, mapping existing grassroot solutions and initiatives, involving usual and unusual suspects and proceed through iteration and testing. Deep listening facilitates unpacking of hidden and meta narratives while collective interpretation allows for collective intelligence and validation of the findings with the help of the stakeholders. Furthermore, co-creation and co-design facilitates collaborative development of new value (concepts, solutions, products, and services) together with experts and stakeholders. Prototyping allows for small-scale testing of ideas and experimenting with tangible products or services. Testing allows for refining of and validation of the designs, so that the proof of concept is achieved, and the end product/service meets the needs of the users. Investing in this challenge would unleash rich data and promote community engagement and grassroot innovation. The powering of a people-powered Social Innovation Platform (SIP) aims to identify a portfolio of multi-level interventions to ensure a future where all youth, women, and others at risk of being left behind, contribute to and benefit from inclusive, resilient, and sustainable livelihood activities.
Short “tweet” summary: We would like to tweet what you are working on, can you summarize your challenge in a maximum of 280 characters?
Establishing a Social Innovation Platform on Future of Work aims to create thematic solution support platforms as an integrated approach for complex development issues to create just, resilient and sustainable livelihood opportunities.
Learning questions
Learning question: What is your learning question for this challenge? What do you need to know or understand to work on your challenge statement?
How might we create inclusive, resilient, and sustainable livelihood opportunities to ensure youth, women, and others at risk are not left behind.
To what stage(s) in the learning cycle does your learning question relate?
Sense, Explore, Test, Grow
Usage of methods: Relating to your choice above, how will you use your methods & tools for this learning question? What value do these add in answering your learning question?
Solutions mapping: Identifying existing initiatives/solutions from government, civil society, private sector, and local communities. Collective intelligence: To gather information and solicit inputs to validate findings and analysis. Co-creation: To collaboratively new value (concepts, solutions, products, and services) together with experts and stakeholders. Co-creation is a form of collaborative innovation: ideas are shared and improved together, rather than kept to oneself. Prototyping: Testing new ideas developed, and collect data of the experimentation/testing process to achieve the proof of concept.
Existing data gaps: Relating to your choice above, what existing gaps in data or information do these new sources of data addressing? What value do these add in answering your learning question?
In-depth interviews: Can be very insightful and will provide us with information on varied experience. As such, will allow for a richer analysis of pain points from a wider angle. Moreover, in-depth interviews with unusual suspects who may not often participate in such data collection would enable us to compare individual experiences of the mainstreams with ones that are at risk of being left behind. Prototyping: New prototypes that will emerge form the deep listening, sensemaking and co-creation will be tested in an experimental process. Prototyping will help us to refine and validate designs, so to ensure the needs are met.
5Gender equality
8Decent work and economic growth
10Reduced innequalities
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