Our Programmes
YBI is dedicated to delivering inclusive youth entrepreneurship support that empowers young people of all backgrounds to start and scale a successful business. Our programmes address the specific support needs and barriers of underserved groups, including women, refugees and migrants, Indigenous people, and people with disabilities.
Empowering women
In Kenya, our Revolving Loan Fund supports women-led businesses to grow with loans and advisory support provided by our member Somo. In just one year, the Revolving Fund has supported 77 businesses with loans, led to the creation of 326 direct jobs by supported businesses, and created 28% average monthly revenue growth for businesses supported with loans. The programme is funded by Standard Chartered Foundation as part of Futuremakers by Standard Chartered.
Empowering refugees and migrants
In Poland, we continued our specialist support for displaced Ukrainian entrepreneurs through BEST (Business Employability Skills Training) with our member Youth Business Poland. After the project’s successful first phase, which reached 11,000 participants through interventions such as webinars, mentoring, business mixers, and advisory support, BEST was extended until the end of June 2024. The programme is funded by Standard Chartered Foundation as part of Futuremakers by Standard Chartered.
To increase our support for young refugee and migrant entrepreneurs across Europe, we launched the SEER (Seeking Economic Empowerment and Resilience) programme, supported by our partner Accenture. Delivered in partnership with YBI members KIZ (Germany), ICE (Ireland), MicroLab (Italy), and NyföretagarCentrum (Sweden), the programme supports young refugees and migrants to access employment and entrepreneurship opportunities.
Empowering Indigenous people
In Canada, our member Futurpreneur continued to deliver The Ophikiwin Series: Journey to Financial Empowerment, a financial literacy programme for young Indigenous entrepreneurs, led by YBI and Futurpreneur and funded by our partner Accenture. As part of this, Futurpreneur also delivered their Indigenous Entrepreneurship Workshop series to YBI members. The workshops addressed ways to engage Indigenous communities in programme design and the impact of territories on Indigenous entrepreneurship.
Collective action for inclusive youth entrepreneurship
In December 2023, we wrapped up eight Futuremakers projects, funded by Standard Chartered Foundation, across Africa, Asia and Europe, with a particular focus on supporting young female entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs with disabilities. In June 2023, we brought together our eight project members in Kampala, Uganda, for our Collective Action Community of Practice. Together, we developed a Theory of Change to deliver better outcomes on financial health for young entrepreneurs.
Over 15,000 supported young entrepreneurs started or strengthened a business and created over 8,000 new jobs.
In November 2023, we launched our new research report ‘Identifying and Supporting High Flying Businesses – An Exploratory Analysis of Enterprise and Entrepreneur Data’ which provides insights on the factors that enabled top performers from our High Flyers I programme (2018 – 2021) to scale their business. Drawing on these findings, the members of our global High Flyers Community of Practice have identified and selected High Flyers guidelines to implement in their support programmes, ranging from ways to identify and select high-growth potential young entrepreneurs to mentoring and access to finance support. The Community of Practice and global High Flyers II programme are implemented by ten YBI members in eight countries across Africa, Asia, Europe and South America, funded by the Argidius Foundation.
Young entrepreneurs have the potential to be agents and leaders of change and create more sustainable and inclusive economies across the globe, if they are given the right support. We work with our global network of members to empower young people to build sustainable and responsible businesses and provide specialised support for young green and social entrepreneurs.
Empowering responsible and sustainable businesses
Supported by our partner JP Morgan Chase, we launched our Sustainability Toolkit, a set of practical, easy-to-use tools and guidelines which helps entrepreneurs to integrate sustainable environmental practices into their business. We co-created the toolkit with social entrepreneurship consultancy SoJo and our members Fetola (South Africa), Hatch Enterprise (UK), KIZ (Germany), Positiv (France) and Youth Business Spain who piloted it with a first cohort of young entrepreneurs. In 2024, we are rolling out the Sustainability Toolkit training to ten new YBI members to support even more young entrepreneurs on their sustainability journey.
Supported by our partner Google.org, we continued our COVID-19 Recovery Programme for social enterprises in South Korea, delivered by our members Work Together Foundation and Impact Square. Work Together Foundation provided intensive training courses for early-stage social enterprises on key topics including business model development, digital transformation and marketing. In September 2023, Impact Square launched Impact Circle, an online platform providing free access to support resources for small and medium enterprises (SMEs), start-ups and social enterprises.
