GEN is run by a group of visionary, off-kilter & always optimistic young men & women from around the globe. Our Business Lab provides young, low-income & at-risk youth with living wages, business & skills training, benefits, and a career path in our local youth-run businesses. This career path focuses on upward mobility-youth can progress from trainee to employee to manager to owner/operator & have the option of exiting to start their own business with their newly gained skills and experience.
According to the ILO, 75 million youth are out of work globally. Another 4 out of 5 youth who are working do so informally, in low-paid, insecure, and even unsafe conditions. At the same time, developing countries will struggle to fill 85 million middle and high skilled jobs and 45 million low-skilled jobs by 2020. Poor connections between education institutions, job-seeking youth, and employers are creating a global skills gap, resulting in unemployment, discouragement, and social unrest.
There are 75 million unemployed youth globally today, vulnerable to exploitation & susceptible to criminal activities, but full of potential. Caught in a poverty trap, struggling entrepreneurs are confined to small, undifferentiated & unprofitable enterprises. Many don't have the resources to set up or grow their businesses. Poor connections between education institutions, job-seeking youth & employers are creating a global skills gap, resulting in unemployment, discouragement & social unrest.
By 2017, we aim to have created over 100 jobs - not precarious informal sector odd jobs or contractor roles with no benefits, but real jobs. Real career paths. And real opportunities to work up to equity ownership, so youth own a piece of the value they helped create.
This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).
