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.
- The YES Campaign
The YES Campaign is a civil society response to the enormous global challenge of youth unemployment. The Campaign was formally launched at the first Youth Employment Summit in September 2002, in Alexandria, Egypt. Since then, there have been four additional Summits – Mexico 2004, Kenya 2006, Azerbaijan 2008 and Sweden 2010 each attended by about two thousands of delegates from around the world.In the eight years since its launch, the YES Campaign has overseen the formation of youth-led networks in over 50 countries. These networks liaise with stakeholder groups (government, business, academics, NGOs, and UN agencies) to develop programs and policies for promoting youth employment. Through the networks, the YES Campaign plans, implements, and evaluates projects around the globe, keeping youth at the center of its efforts.
YES most recent initiatives are:
- Entreprise Studio
With so much conflict in the world, YES is generating the Enterprise Studio™ as refuge for young people to paint the canvas of their dreams. The Enterprise Studio™ is an innovative architecture that allows for a co-creation of projects among multi-stakeholder groups that embraces the traditional YES low-touch high-impact methodology. With each host country YES embarks on a visioning and planning process designed to create programs that awaken youth and other partners to the power of entrepreneurship and job creation.
The goal of the Enterprise Studio ™ is to inspire young people to find and share their passions, build upon their ‘Big Idea’, locate tools, and sign up with mentors to create a life of promise. Artists create beauty by painting on blank canvases, and we want to offer this opportunity to youth around the world.
The Enterprise Studio program is currently being piloted in Senegal. YES is working with a diverse group of stakeholders including the government, local NGOs, and foundations to develop integrated pilots for promoting youth employment and entrepreneurship. YES is working in partnership with Synapse, YES Senegal host agency to achieve the following:
Set up a YouthTrade Innovation Studio that will launch YouthTrade Senegal
Develop a Large Scale Enterprise Generation Project through a multi-stakeholder partnership approach
Pilot a Micro-Franchising Model with local businesses to fuel job creation
Host Innovation Conversations Workshops with important stakeholders that focus on topics such as providing urban amenities for rural areas, building an IT infrastructure in Senegal, ramping up mathematic learning, and super accelerated learning theory (SALT).
Implement Projects and Support Actions based on the results of Innovation Conversation Workshops
An Enterprise Studio is also being piloted in Mali in partnership with the Ministry of Youth and Sports. The first two projects of the Mali Generator are to:
Organize the first YES Mali Summit in Feb. 2012 that will include a full day of programming focused on engaging youth leaders as entrepreneurial nation builders. The Summit is being organized to identify and recruit fifty youth leaders to be the Generator’s first students.
Deliver a one year Institute on Social Entrepreneurship to 50 Mali youth leaders starting in February 2011. The Institute will include a twelve-month project internship and training curriculum that uses a “vision, commitment, action/transformation” model to build the capacity of trainees. The training will include a three week intensive based on classroom learning and group activities. Following the three week intensive participants will complete nine month, in-country internships.
The Enterprise Studio™ is an innovative architecture that allows for a co-creation of projects among multi-stakeholder groups that embraces the traditional YES low-touch high-impact methodology. With each host country YES embarks on a visioning and planning process designed to create programs that awaken youth and other partners to the power of entrepreneurship and job creation.
The Enterprise Studio program is currently being piloted in Senegal and Mali.
YouthTrade is a social movement that aims to open access to markets for mission-driven youth entrepreneurs. Inspired by Conscious Capitalism, it is built on a simple yet big idea--aligning conscious companies with conscious entrepreneurs.
It creates a unique architecture, certifying youth businesses, and enrolling conscious companies to open shelf space for these goods building awareness through social media, through corporate buying programs (YouthTrade Champions), and through setting up YouthTrade Clubs to educate the next generation.
Built on a simple yet big idea- providing markets for goods of young entrepreneurs under the age of 35. YouthTrade was born out of the question of how to align conscious companies with conscious entrepreneurs. YouthTrade is currently being piloted in Mali, Nigeria, Senegal and the US.
Few facts:
The YES Campaign has:
- Formalized pro-youth government policies in 60 percent of existing networks;
- Established high-level partnerships with UN agencies in 30 countries and with 25 major international organizations (including the World Bank, EC, GEF, OECD, IADB, OAS, USAID, SIDA, SDC, ILO);
- Secured support from large private sector corporations including Levi-Strauss and Microsoft, as well as from international donor agencies including Swiss Development Corporation;
- Leveraged an average of $5 million per continent to support network activities and over $2.5 million from the Government of India alone.
- The YES Campaign works on behalf of millions of young people in the world who are clamoring for a better future and an opportunity for productive work. Young people are cognizant of the inequities of the global system, and are susceptible to association with the negative forces in their communities if help does not come their way. This initiative offers youth a chance to participate in a global campaign to make a difference in their countries and communities.
- The YES Inc. became an independent non-profit – January 1, 2007.
Learn more about YES here
