We support underserved young entrepreneurs (18 – 35 years) to start, grow and sustain their businesses - enabling them to create jobs, build communities and transform lives.
Regardless of where we work, our focus is on young people with a viable business idea but without access to the support structures they need to set up and run businesses.
Young people are critical to future economic development. However, with 66 million young people currently unemployed across the world, this potential is not being realised. Furthermore, of those that are working, many do not earn enough to lift themselves out of poverty.
Addressing the youth employment crisis is imperative, not only for the well-being of young people but also to ensure sustainable, inclusive growth and social cohesion globally. Empowering young people to succeed in running their own businesses is part of the solution. Young entrepreneurs create new jobs and shape local economies. Young people equipped with entrepreneurship skills are better able to navigate the challenges of today’s rapidly changing job market.
Since 2014, we have supported 123,114 young people to start or grow a business by delivering a range of entrepreneurship support services, from training and mentoring to access to finance and other business development services.
We connect and support expert organisations (our members), partners and young people to develop and scale new solutions to the critical challenges facing underserved young entrepreneurs. As a result, our members deliver better quality support to more young people through sector-leading solutions and products.
As a network, we work with our members to:
Building impactful organisations
Our members have diverse expertise across the full range of youth entrepreneurship support services. We deliver training and other capacity development support, facilitate member learning exchanges and connect members to partners with relevant expertise.
Developing new products and services
By convening the collective expertise of the network, we can identify gaps in support for young entrepreneurs, not just in one market but around the world. Using this insight, we work with members across the world to develop new solutions.
Generating and leveraging evidence
As a global network we are well positioned to address the lack of robust evidence on youth entrepreneurship. We work with members to undertake research on priority themes and use the learnings to drive change in policy and practice.
Our members around the world provide young entrepreneurs with an integrated package of financial and non-financial support to help them start and grow sustainable businesses.
YBI members work with young entrepreneurs to ensure they have all the technical support they need in order to thrive
Our commitment to mentoring sees young entrepreneurs paired with an experienced volunteer business mentor to guide them through the challenging early stages of establishing a business.
YBI members provide young entrepreneurs with an interest-free/low interest loan to cover the expenses of starting or growing their business.
From specific training in business practice to basic assistance with things like bookkeeping and financial management
Our vision is that youth entrepreneurship is recognised for driving sustainable economic development around the world, creating jobs and strengthening communities.
Our global strategy is deliberately ambitious in response to the unacceptably high rate of global youth unemployment. Young people equipped with entrepreneurship skills are better able to navigate the challenges of today’s rapidly changing job market.
Our stretch goal: between 2017 and 2025 YBI will help 1 million young entrepreneurs start, strengthen and grow sustainable businesses.
To achieve this, we will focus on four strategic pillars: