Empowering NEET Girls in Bangladesh: GESP’s Transformative Impact Amid Global Skill Gaps

As the world grapples with persistent gender and skills gaps in education and employment, the Girls’ Education and Skills Partnership (GESP) emerges as a powerful example of how targeted interventions can close these divides—especially among the most marginalized young women.

Global Skills & Gender Context

Worldwide, nearly 75% of youth aged 15–24 lack the skills needed for secure jobs—an issue particularly acute among adolescent girls and young women( UNICEF, Generation Unlimited and The New Nation). This demographic faces compounded barriers—social norms, limited access to education, and market mismatches.

Initiatives like the Passport 2 Earning (P2E) digital platform and the Challenge Fund within GESP (a partnership led by UNICEF, FCDO, and GenU alongside private sector actors such as Microsoft and Standard Chartered) are beginning to bridge this gap( Generation Unlimited and Daily Observer).

Bangladesh at the Crossroads

Bangladesh ranks high for adolescent challenges: approximately 27% of youth—some 12.6 million—are NEET (Not in Education, Employment, or Training), and a staggering 90% of them are female World Bank. Early marriage (over 50% of women aged 20–24 married before 18) and high rates of violence are still major issues (The United Nations in Bangladesh and United News Bangladesh).Recognizing these systemic issues, the government and UNICEF piloted the Skill Focused Literacy for Out of School Adolescent (SKILFO) program—training over 6,800 adolescents (55% girls) in functional literacy, numeracy, and vocational skills (e.g., IT, hospitality, light engineering), with remarkable outcomes: 83 % of girls placed in income-sustaining roles (Dhaka Tribune and The Daily Star).

GESP: Intensive Training for NEET Girls in Cox’s Bazar & Bandarban

The Girls’ Education and Skills Partnership (GESP) initiative in Cox’s Bazar and Bandarban is much more than a localized training program—it’s a strategic response to Bangladesh’s critical national needs, global youth employment trends, and Sustainable Development Goals, with tangible impacts rooted in the current crisis environment.

Bangladesh today faces a striking NEET (Not in Education, Employment, or Training) crisis: nearly one in three youth aged 15–29, and over 61% of educated females, remain disengaged, depriving the nation of its “demographic dividend” and widening gender and economic divides CPD. Globally, in Central and Southern Asia, almost half of young women are NEET—double the rate among young men—while youth unemployment remains persistently high despite modest recovery since the pandemic (UN Women Knowledge portal). Bangladesh’s youth require urgent, effective solutions to prevent long-term economic stagnation and social unrest.

Within this sense of urgency, GESP’s intensive training of 4,100 NEET adolescent girls and young women in Cox’s Bazar and Bandarban crafts a corrective path forward. The program delivers market-driven vocational training in high-demand sectors—food and beverage services, retail sales, basic IT, housekeeping, and climate-resilient agriculture. By combining pre- and post-training assessments with quarterly follow-up and mentoring, the initiative ensures that skills translate directly into employability and opportunities for self-reliance. This is especially relevant in Cox’s Bazar, where the influx of Rohingya refugees has strained local economies and demand for stable, skilled labour is rising.

This work aligns squarely with SDG 4 (Quality Education and Lifelong Learning), particularly targets 4.3 and 4.4, which aim for equitable access to vocational training and increased ICT and technical skills among youth and adults. Simultaneously, it advances SDG 5 (Gender Equality), especially targets 5.a and 5.b, by equipping girls with economic resources, digital literacy, and leadership competencies—effectively dismantling gender-based barriers and boosting female labor force participation, which in Bangladesh remains lower than male counterparts despite improvements in political representation.

At the national level, these 4,100 trained girls symbolize far more than statistical success—they represent a strategic investment in Bangladesh’s economic future. Each trained individual translates into measurable gains in national literacy (Bangladesh rose from 51.8% in 2011 to 74.7% in 2022) Wikipedia, poverty reduction, and increased female participation in formal labor—bolstering GDP growth, reducing reliance on foreign labor, and curbing social vulnerabilities.

Through local leadership by Jaago Foundation Trust, funding from FCDO, and technical stewardship from UNICEF, GESP becomes an integrated model of crisis mitigation, national development, and SDG acceleration. As the world edges closer to 2030 with many SDGs not on track studylib.net, the GESP initiative shines as a timely, high-impact demonstration of how targeted training for NEET girls can pivot national challenges into national assets—positioning Bangladesh not just to meet its SDG targets but to exceed them.