Afghanistan Integrated Youth Activity (AIYA) Program

Deadline: 12-Jul-2024

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is seeking applications for a cooperative agreement from qualified entities to implement the Afghanistan Integrated Youth Activity (AIYA) program.

The Afghanistan Integrated Activity (AIYA) aims to empower Afghan youth, particularly girls and young women, by equipping them with market-relevant technical and soft skills. This initiative seeks to enhance income, food security, and economic resilience among participants. The overarching goal of AIYA is to improve learning outcomes and livelihood opportunities for young women and men. Expected outcomes include: 1) Improved post-secondary technical and vocational education or learning opportunities for youth, with a focus on market-relevant, skills-based learning within the agricultural sector and its related value chains. 2) Youth, particularly girls and young women, acquire market-relevant skills to improve livelihood opportunities and engage in climate resilient agricultural value chains in their home, community, or other settings.

Strategic Priorities

• This integrated youth activity will advance USAID/Afghanistan’s Strategic Framework overarching goal: Advance the resilience of Afghan people, especially women and girls. This activity will directly contribute to and advance the following Special Objectives and sub-results:
  • Special Objective 1: Promote fundamental freedoms, rights, and inclusion.
    • Strengthen capacity of local organizations.
  • Special Objective 2: Promote the right to safe, equitable, and quality education for Afghan children and youth, particularly girls and young women.
    • Restore Afghan girls’ rights to secondary education.
    • Expand market-relevant higher education opportunities for youth, especially young women.
  • Special Objective 4: Improve livelihoods, with particular focus on women, youth, and climate change.
    • Enhance food security through climate-resilient agriculture.
    • Increase economic opportunities for vulnerable communities, especially women and youth.

Funding Information

• USAID intends to award one (1) Cooperative Agreement pursuant to this notice of funding opportunity. Subject to funding availability and at the discretion of the Agency, USAID intends to provide $62,000,000 in total USAID funding over a five (5) year period.

Results Framework

• USAID/Afghanistan Goal: Advance the resilience of the Afghan people, especially women and girls.
• AIYA Goal: Improve learning outcomes and livelihood opportunities for young women and men.
• Objective 1: Youth complete market-relevant post-secondary education and training opportunities.
  • To achieve objective 1 USAID seeks to support programs that reach young people, particularly young women, who have already attained a secondary degree, or its equivalent, and provide them with post-secondary educational or training learning opportunities. AIYA seeks to improve access to, and the quality and relevance of a variety of post-secondary learning opportunities that are vocationally focused. As a result, graduates will be equipped with skills for employment or entrepreneurship in the agricultural sector and its related value chains. Successful interventions to achieve this objective may focus on engaging and empowering youth for meaningful employment or entrepreneurship opportunities, and career development, whether that is with the private sector or home-based.
  • USAID envisions a multi-pronged approach under this objective: 1) focused student support to access and complete post-secondary education, training, and career opportunities; 2) TVET or other post-secondary educational institution and/or private sector training capacity strengthening to provide market-relevant education and training; and 3) engagement with private sector actors, which may include local agriculture commodity organizations and/or unions.
  • USAID seeks programs that enhance the quality and relevance of post-secondary vocational education, resulting in graduates equipped with the necessary skills for entrepreneurship or employment in the agricultural sector and its related value chains. This may include opportunities for young people to gain hand-ons skills through project-based learning, internships, apprenticeships, and/or service learning opportunities.
  • This support may take a variety of forms, including, but not limited to:
    • Scholarships, grants (unconditional cash transfers), and/or other forms of financial assistance;
    • Soft skills development;
    • Mentoring, career counseling, coaching;
    • Opportunities to engage with their communities;
    • Supportive learning environment and;
    • Mental health and psychosocial support.
  • In working with TVET or other post-secondary education and training providers, AIYA may support programs to update curriculum and pedagogy, including on content related to climate change adaptation and mitigation, and to enhance hands-on, practical learning experiences. As a result, students will be equipped with the skills required for employment in the agricultural sector and its related value chains. This support may take a variety of forms, including, but not limited to:
    • Providing training for current instructors and new recruits with expertise in the field with pedagogy, assessment techniques, classroom management, and the integration of technology into teaching practices to effectively impart skills and knowledge to students.
    • Providing TVET or other instructors with access to educational resources, such as textbooks, online courses, instructional videos, and teaching aids, to enhance their knowledge and teaching effectiveness.
    • Career guidance and placement services to help students transition from education to employment.
  • Results desired under this objective include, but are not limited to:
    • 1.1: Increased access to post-secondary learning opportunities for youth to acquire knowledge, skills, and experience needed for increased economic opportunities.
    • 1.2: Improved delivery of in-service/continuing professional development for post-secondary instructors.
    • 1.3: Strengthened capacity of providers of post-secondary learning opportunities to provide market-relevant education and training.
• Objective 2: Youth complete market-relevant secondary equivalent education and training opportunities.
  • To achieve objective 2 USAID seeks to support programs that provide young people, particularly young women, who have not yet attained a secondary degree or its equivalent, with market-relevant education and training opportunities. Under this objective, AIYA will focus on providing or improving the quality of existing informal and alternative training opportunities in vocational, entrepreneurship, food security, climate resilient agriculture, and related value chains, as well as the soft skills and workforce readiness skills needed to be employed by the private sector.
  • AIYA-supported training and education opportunities should be designed and delivered in a way that accommodates the location (including in the home), schedule, and safety needs of youth, particularly girls and young women. Successful training opportunities will be practical and hands-on, and may include innovative and flexible approaches such as demonstrations, apprenticeships, “on the job” mentoring, peer based learning via cooperatives or learning circles, and/or hybrid or distance learning.
  • USAID seeks to support programs that integrate the acquisition of foundational skills, such as financial literacy and soft skills. USAID believes such skills are both relevant and necessary to improve youth’s ability to successfully participate in training and future employment opportunities. Promoting youth agency and voice by engaging them in the design and decision making on what skills, where, when, in what modality, and for what type of future employment or career will be critical, especially given the skills needed to continuously adapt their plans to current and anticipated shocks and stressors.
  • USAID seeks to support programs that propose solutions to overcome barriers for youth to access economic opportunities including approaches to address the lack of essential business skills, market linkages, and financial management that hinder their ability to establish and manage successful enterprises including access to finance. To improve resilience to climate shocks, approaches that promote climate-smart agriculture to increase productivity, adapt to climate change, and reduce emissions are needed.
  • AIYA aims to support young people to have the information, knowledge, and skills to pursue market relevant employment and careers while being prepared to adapt to and be resilient in the face of anticipated contextual shifts from shocks such as climate change, insecurity, and political shifts. Types of support may include but not be limited to:
    • Training and access to finance to pursue entrepreneurial opportunities.
    • Coaching in climate-smart agriculture, home gardening, food budgeting, conservation agriculture, skills training.
    • Mentoring for climate-resilient businesses and climate-adaptive livelihood training.
    • Identify and train community based mentors/facilitators/master trainers to provide demonstrations and other types of hands-on vocational, entrepreneurial, food security, innovative and climate resilient agricultural approaches in homes, farms, and nearby private enterprises.
  • Results desired under this objective include, but are not limited to:
    • 2.1: Expanded provision of functional literacy and numeracy skills training for youth, particularly young women.
    • 2.2: Expanded training opportunities for youth to gain employability and entrepreneurial skills and knowledge in climate-resilient livelihood sectors.
    • 2.3: Enhanced quality of existing informal and alternative education and training opportunities and providers.
• Cross-cutting 
  • Across the proposed AIYA objectives, USAID envisions that there will be an opportunity to identify and integrate synergies across the two objectives to support priorities elaborated by young people and their local communities to have a sense of “ownership”, build resilience and bring lasting changes in their lives. These cross-cutting results include, but are not limited to:
    • 3.1: Enhanced partnerships with the private sector to improve youth and women agri-business and other market relevant skills.
    • 3.2: Improved youth awareness of career opportunities and pathways to pursue market relevant training and support services.
    • 3.3: Increased use of cash transfers or other innovative approaches for youth to achieve self-identified educational, employment, and/or entrepreneurship goals.
    • 3.4: Improved access to extension services and other forms of community education and outreach.

Target Populations 

• Young women and young men ages 15 -29 (at least 60 percent of participants should be young women). USAID seeks to support programs that take an intersectional perspective on support for marginalized youth – including, but not limited to: extremely poor youth, young LGBTQ+ individuals, rural youth, and youth with disability, as well as other dimensions of intersectionality of young people.

Geographic Code 

• The geographic code for the procurement of commodities and services under this program is code 935, which includes the United States, the recipient country, and developing countries other than advanced developing countries, but excluding any country that is a prohibited source.

Eligibility Criteria

• Eligibility for this notice of funding opportunity (NOFO) is not restricted.
• USAID/Afghanistan welcomes an approach that demonstrates flexibility to being responsive to youth-identified development challenges and constraints. Given the multi-faceted nature of the Activity, a consortium approach is welcome and encouraged, including both local and international partners with expertise in relevant programmatic areas, such as basic education, higher education, youth empowerment, agriculture, economic growth, and/or democracy and governance.
• USAID welcomes applications from organizations that have not previously received financial assistance from USAID.
• Faith-based organizations are eligible to apply for federal financial assistance on the same basis as any other organization and are subject to the protections and requirements of Federal law.

For more information, visit Grants.gov.