Maldives - Enhancing Employability and Resilience of Youth Project

Overview & Synopsis

Ratings of the Maldives: Enhancing Employability and Resilience of Youth Project for Maldives were as follows: outcome was moderately satisfactory; Bank performance was moderately satisfactory; M&E quality was modest. Lessons learned and recommendations are as follows. Structured sequencing from skills diagnostics through standards development to training delivery is feasible even in small island and geographically dispersed contexts, and should be sustained by early action to resolve system bottlenecks such as assessment capacity, provider delivery capacity, and trainee retention; where dropouts are prevalent, early diagnostic work should inform adjustments to program design and participant support. Entrepreneurship grant schemes should explicitly balance intensity of support and breadth of access, recognizing that higher-value, tailored support may yield stronger enterprise survival and growth at a higher cost per beneficiary, while smaller grants can advance inclusion—especially for young women—at lower cost but may be less effective for viability; to improve sustainability, introduce private capital to co-finance competitions, mentoring, and incubation from the outset. Cross-ministerial operations should adopt implementation arrangements that fit mandates and incentives and be matched with realistic supervision resources; early political economy analysis and periodic reassessment of supervision needs are essential, since formal coordination mechanisms alone cannot compensate for misaligned arrangements. Effective results frameworks and M&E systems require dedicated expertise at both design and implementation; assign a specialist to align activities with the theory of change, revise the results framework when needed, build capacity, and rely on administrative data—such as business registration and pension or social insurance records—where feasible instead of new survey instruments. Flexibility in design helps sustain government ownership and relevance, but should be grounded in realistic feasibility assessments and be accompanied by timely updates to the theory of change and results framework; when significant new activities are introduced or existing ones change, revisit scope, indicators, and timelines to ensure alignment with the development objective and deliverability by closure.