Challenge Fund for Youth Employment is providing co-investment and a tailored package of support for innovative and scalable approaches to creating or improving youth employment. The focus of this call is to support the scale-up of successful approaches or development and testing of new approaches to:
- increase youth access to new or existing decent jobs and/or
- improve the quality of jobs for youth, especially young women
The goal of the Challenge Fund for Youth Employment is to support robust and innovative ideas for creating or improving decent work prospects for youth, especially young women. For this program, youth is defined as between the ages of 15 – 35. Over the next 6 years, they’ll work with selected Implementing Partners across the Middle East, North Africa, Sahel/West Africa and the Horn of Africa to tackle the challenge of youth underemployment and unemployment in these regions. Their projects will enable 200,000 young people to access new or better employment, including wage or salary jobs, or self-employment. They seek market-based solutions with innovative and scalable approaches. They will support projects that put youth, especially young women, to work in decent jobs that better reflect their aspirations and skills.
Young women and men are unemployed, vulnerably employed, and underemployed across the Middle East, North Africa, Sahel/West Africa and the Horn of Africa. Market weaknesses exist on the demand and the supply sides: employers require capacity, capital, and targeted strategies to hire young jobseekers, while young people lack relevant information, skills, and capabilities for today’s and tomorrow’s job markets. The challenge is more acutely felt by women, who experience specific barriers, especially to higher-paid work. As a result, youth face low prospects for the future.
Location: Uganda
Benefits:
- Technical support will be available for applicants throughout the process.
- The Fund Manager will organize physical and online information sessions for potential applicants.
- Interested parties are welcome to contact the Fund Manager to discuss ideas and seek guidance or support for concept note development. Once projects are selected for implementation, tailored technical support will also be made available to maximize the delivery of results.
Eligibilities:
- Ideas are invited from private sector organizations, civil society, and knowledge institutions or a consortium involving two or more partners.
- Regardless of the status of the applicant, all concept notes and business cases will be assessed against the same criteria.
- Since proposed initiatives should have a clear pathway to decent work for youth, both youth themselves and employers will be involved in the design of the project.
- All projects will need to report on their results and the financial contributions made by the Fund will be linked to the achievement of those results.
- The Fund is looking for sustainable and scalable initiatives implemented by partners who will be able to contribute on average two-thirds of the total project budget.
Eligible Region: Open for all
Application Deadline: February 15, 2020
Official Link: https://fundforyouthemployment.nl/
