Global Partnership for Youth Investment

In 2007, ImagineNations and the World Bank founded the Global Partnership for Youth Investment (GPYI), a formal and enduring relationship that shared a common mission: To improve the lives of young people (with a special emphasis on adolescent girls and young women) through their economic advancement and social inclusion. Two founding donors were Nike Foundation and FirstBlue.

With the completion of the World Bank's Development Grant Facility funding, ImagineNations and the World Bank have concluded their three-year commitment to the Partnership and formally disengaged at the end of 2011. GPYI garnered several important achievements in advancing opportunities for young people, and ImagineNations is looking forward to continuing many of these initiatives unders its leadership, as a co-founding partner of GPYI. ImagineNations and the World Bank are looking forward to a continued relationship.

The Partnership focused on:

Goal 1: Build and sustain a committed alliance of global partners and donors with a special emphasis on corporations and tapping corporate philanthropy.

Goal 2: Mobilize financing toward advancing youth entrepreneurship, empowerment and citizenship, and manage a Global Fund for Youth Investment.

Goal 3: Identify and finance initiatives around the world that work, and take them to scale, impacting tens of millions of young people.

Goal 4: Build a knowledge bank from innovative research and development of microfinance investment products for youth and youth enterprise that are disseminated as a global public good.

Goal 5: Develop and support a south-south technical assistance and capacity building facility that brings models of what works from one developing country to another.

Partnership activities include the following, several of which are continuing under the leadership of ImagineNations and its partners:

Youth Investment Trust of Zambia. A multi-million dollar public-private financing and technical assistance facility to reduce poverty through increasing youth employment and enterprise opportunities.
Youth Employment, Entrepreneurship, and Investment Program of Indonesia. A public-private partnership and multi-donor financed program of support to create new employment and self-employment for over 1 million young people in four years.
Youth "Windows" in Commercial Banks & Microfinance Institutions. A public-private consortium led by ImagineNations with support from the World Bank Group is finalizing the acquisition of a commercial bank that will support the high-growth niche youth market, including factory workers, migrants, and young entrepreneurs. Currently, over 4 million Indonesian youth-led micro, small and medium size enterprises are constrained by a lack of financial access.
Youth Microfinance (global). Develop the evidence base, customize and test new microfinance products to reach over 300 million young people currently excluded from the portfolios of well-known microfinance institutions.
Arab World Strategy & Support Program. With $100 million in seed capital, Silatech seeks to define the role that governments, private sector, civil society organizations, young people and many others can play to improve the lives of young people across the entire region, and particularly in the area of youth employment generation and social capital formation.