Unprecedented Targets Require Unprecedented CLA Models

Launched September 2021, Honduras Creando Mi Futuro Aquí (Creating My Future Here) faced high expectations. Designed to engage young people at risk of irregular migration to the United States, Creando was structured around two targets never before seen in Honduras: engage 500,000 youth in the Honduran economy and society, while placing 100,000 of them in jobs or micro-enterprises, enabling them to return to high school or TVET, or graduate school. In the face of these challenges, Creando created a CLA culture that shaped and reshaped implementation around M&E for Learning within a healthy work environment to achieve these targets. In its first month, Creando turned to Mission Resources. One education expert leveraged the relationships and networks acquired through another USAID-DAI education activity to rescue, and return to class, the project's first seven high school dropouts in Week 3. By adapting a prior USAID-DAI grants manual from Somalia, the team secured Creando's Grants Manual's approval in Week 8. That very same week, Creando made its first award to a prior USAID-proven grantee. Other USAID-trained staff used their relationships with another stakeholder to place the first vulnerable youth in employment in Week 9. The Activity also incorporated feedback—brief surveys, grantee consultations, post-event debriefs, and key informant interviews, among others—to improve M&E for Learning. The collective Technical Evidence Base drove decision-making. As a result, Creando exceeded Year I targets and our organizational effectiveness is increasing: whereas almost 1,900 youth found jobs in Year I, more than 7,000 have done so in the first seven and a half months of Year II.