Youth Entrepreneurship and Sustainability

Youth Entrepreneurship and Sustainability (YES) is an international non-profit dedicated to fighting poverty through large-scale job creation and entrepreneurship for youth. YES is located in Cambridge, Massachusetts

The mission of the YES Campaign is to nurture the over 55 YES Country Networks, empowered to lead a global movement that would collectively help address the unemployment problem among youth by providing them with opportunities to develop their leadership skills, training in marketable job oriented skills, and access to resources and linkages needed to realize their potential as young social and economic entrepreneurs.

The Campaign aims to resolve the global youth unemployment crisis by encouraging diverse groups of stakeholders to support youth-led Country Networks to identify design and implement specific training and development programs for promoting youth employment and entrepreneurship.

Target population: YES Campaign has taken the Commonwealth Secretariat's age group for youth, 14–35 years.[1]

Background

In 1998 Youth Employment Summit (YES) was launched as a project of Education Development Center (EDC), an international, non-profit that manages over 400 projects all over the world, dedicated to enhancing learning and promoting health. The YES Campaign was launched in 2002, by 75 Ministers and over 1,600 delegates, youth leaders, UN agencies, and NGOs government officials from 120 countries at the 1st Global YES summit held at the Library of Alexandria, Egypt. The summit paved the way for a 10-year program designed primarily to place the issue of youth employment on the global agenda, develop and support in-country YES networks led by youth, design replicable youth-led entrepreneurship and employment generation programs, build youth capacity through training, and support in-country coalitions to develop national youth employment strategies.

In 2007, after 8 years of incubation at EDC, YES was launched as an independent nonprofit. Today, YES is recognized as an international leader in youth employment and entrepreneurship that has facilitated the creation of over 50 YES Country Networks, that has laid the foundation for promoting in-country youth employment and entrepreneurship programs. YES’ impact is demonstrated through the over 400 youth-led projects and programs in over fifty countries, primarily in developing nations in Africa, South America, and Asia. YES Networks have impacted about one million young people during their first decade, according to an independent study. YES has compiled more than 1,000 on-line resource documents on best practices and tools for youth employment, and commissioned over 150 original publications on youth employment.[1]

A global vision

YES Campaign focuses on 5 key sectors from the UN Millennium Development Goals. Youth employment and entrepreneurship activities include:

Youth Employment Summits: To place and hold the issue of youth unemployment on the global agenda: YES does this by convening stakeholders at its Global Summits. At these Summits – the youth delegates meet with experts, donors, practitioners, and other stakeholders to develop program and polices that will help build in-country capacity to provide the education, training and other services needed by young people to find productive work or to become entrepreneurs.

Entrepreneurship development

YES Fund: Global Fund for Youth Entrepreneurship was launched by the Youth Employment Summit (YES) Campaign, and Microsoft, at the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) in September 2006 with the aim of building a coalition of partners all over the world to work on creating markets and unleashing entrepreneurship.

Capacity building

The 3 P's Program: In August 2007 YES published a comprehensive toolkit entitled The Three P's: Policy, Programs, and Partnerships to empower network leaders with the resources and framework necessary to implement effective and innovative programs that achieve campaign and stakeholder objectives at both the local and national levels.

Social entrepreneurship development

YES Fellows Program: In partnership with Cambridge College in 2008 will be the first-ever youth social entrepreneurship training program. The first offering will be a twelve-month program including three weeks of intensive training and eleven months of project based learning. YES Fellows will be empowered to create a vision of what is possible, build their commitment to action by sharing success stories and tools, and inspire action through their developing and completing a project-based internship at a public, private or NGO institution.

Customized programs

for Donors that focus on Youth Employment Generation /creation

Campaigns and activities

Renewable energy

Objective: Organize youth at community level to assemble, install, service, and market renewable energy systems

Projects:

Water and sanitation

Objective: Integrate youth in community processes to improve the availability and supply of clean drinking water and sanitation services

Projects:

Rural development

Objective: Mobilize youth to develop agricultural extension programs

Projects:

Information and communication technology (ICT)

Objective: Develop programs to support ICT-based entrepreneurship

Projects:

Reproductive health and HIV/AIDS

Objective: Improve reproductive health and family planning choices

Projects:

YES projects

YES Networks

YES Inc has facilitated the creation of YES Country Network, which is an in-country infrastructure of youth-led networks to disseminate information, develop youth employment programs, be advocates for innovative youth friendly policies, and implement projects that promote youth employment and youth leadership building.

YES Academy

The Government of Andhra Pradesh, in India, has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with YES to set up the YES Academy to work with the YES Country Networks to undertake need based research and capacity building for the YES Country Networks. USD 2.5 million has been earmarked by the government for this initiative and a government order has been passed. The YES Academy initiative has forged partnership with MCR Human Resource Institute and got the required Office infrastructure for beginning on-site programs. Few pilot programs on site have already been initiated, in partnership with the UN agencies.

YES HQ Projects

Publications

Youth Employment Summit Campaign has produced over 120 original publications relating to youth empowerment, leadership building and employment generation. All these publications are made available to youth as part of the global knowledge resource section of the YES Website.

Consultations

The YES Country Networks with the support and guidance of the YES HQ have organized countless national and local consultations to bring networks together with diverse stakeholders (governments, private sector, NGO, and educational institutions).

Summits

Global summits

Alexandria, Egypt (2002): the decade-long YES Campaign was launched – with the goal to work on youth employment issues as one of the most compelling problems the world was facing.

Veracruz, Mexico (2004): Hosted by the Government of Veracruz, Mexico.

Nairobi, Kenya (2006): Hosted by the Republic of Kenya

Baku, Azerbaijan (2008): Hosted by the government of Azerbaijan

Leksand, Sweden (2010): Organized by YES and the Tällberg Foundation

Regional summits

Hyderabad, India (2003): Hosted by the government of Andhra Pradesh, India.

Asunción, Paraguay (2005): hosted by YES Latin America, the Government of Paraguay, and the YES Paraguay Network in partnership with UNDP, World Bank, and UNFPA.

The Dominican Republic (2007) : In partnership with the United Nations Association for Dominican Republic

Panama City, Panama (2008) : Organized by YES and Fundación E.

Kansas City, Missouri: (November 2011)

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 "About YES". YES Inc.

External links