Providing access for young people

Situation
The growing context for this growing interest and action in youth investment is clear. One of the most sobering global challenges today is the lack of decent work opportunities for young people. Over the next decade, the International Labour Organization (ILO) expects more than one billion young people will enter the global labor market. Some labor experts predict, however, that based on current trends only about 300 million new jobs will likely be created during this same period. The gap between global youth labor supply and actual labor market demand presents a great challenge for developing countries in particular. Nearly 85 percent of these job seekers will live in the developing world, where we already face the highest rate of youth unemployment (and under-employment) on record, and where young people are more than four times as likely to be unemployed compared with older workers. 

Strategy
ImagineNations’ youth investment strategy provides a framework to significantly expand the opportunities for millions of young adults, especially adolescent girls and young women, to gain access to employment and livelihood through various incentives, business coaching and/or capital for their entrepreneurial ideas.  

Through partnerships with youth leaders, commercial banks, private equity funds and investors, corporations, philanthropists, international organizations, governments and local NGOs, ImagineNations is developing a network of “access points” to opportunities – internships, apprenticeships, jobs, loan guarantees, capital and business coaching – for young people, ages 15-29. ImagineNations seeks to support and to build a menu of practical prospects for young people, providing them with the critical next step after they complete one of the many existing training and employability programs currently offered by youth organizations. ImagineNations is also targeting those young people who do not have access to or are unaware of the programs already in place.

Focus 
Focusing initially on parts of Southeast Asia, Southern Africa and across the Middle East and North Africa, a wide range of financial opportunities, offered through ImagineNations’ partners, will encourage savings and provide access to soft loans, loan-guarantees and fully market-based loans and equity investments. ImagineNations also seeks to create incentives for larger companies to hire young people or to recruit them as interns and apprentices, as well as to spur investments in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to expand and to engage young people in the process. In some cases, new funds or structures may be required, but, wherever possible, the focus is on working through existing infrastructure.

 

ImagineNations’ growing network of partnerships is poised to influence the policy and investment environment in such a way as to provide greater access to large numbers of young entrepreneurs and youth-led enterprises in a range of countries to the capital, business development services and markets they need to start and/or expand micro-enterprises and small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs), which can, in turn, serve as engines of growth and job creation.

 

ImagineNations is adopting aspects of best practices and establishing national strategies for addressing the youth employment challenge in each of its pilot countries, including the establishment of investment funds and public/private partnerships in each country that will support and sustain their efforts. The global youth investment strategy focuses on a variety of financial opportunities for young entrepreneurs, as well as business training and skills development opportunities, tailored to pilot different programs in each country.

This investment strategy for young adults builds on theprinciples and frameworks developed by the High-Level Panel of the Youth Employment Network (YEN). It is also built on examples of best practices of a variety of countries.