CFYE is celebrating 100,000 jobs created, matched and improved!
As the Challenge Fund for Youth Employment project celebrates its five years anniversary, onboards new Implementing Partners from the last call for applications, and concludes their Annual Team Retreat, another monumental milestone adds to the list: the creation, matching and improvement of 100,000 jobs!
The CFYE journey began in 2019 with a vision to support private sector businesses in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East in creating decent job opportunities, with a specific focus on empowering young women and men equally. Each step forward has been fueled by the dedication and hard work of our team, implementing partners, and the beneficiaries of our interventions. With 18 months still to go to achieve our final objective, this milestone came at a perfect moment to remind us of the incredible impact that individual efforts and collaboration have created so far.
Our colleagues from our 11 project countries recently gathered in Utrecht for the long-awaited Annual Retreat, marking not only a perfect occasion to celebrate this success, but also to bring together and recognise the diverse skillset and contributions that provided 100.000 young people with an opportunity to break through biases, overcome structural or systemic obstacles in the job market, and start their career journey within decent employment environments. What we realised is that our flexibility was our strength; in the past 5 years, amidst external (Covid-19, economic and political ups and downs, conflict, changing donors and receiving countries interests and behaviours) and project-specific challenges and changes, we have been able to overcome difficulties in creative and innovative ways. The retreat reinforced the importance of working together towards a common goal and reminded us that our collective efforts are greater than the sum of our individual contributions.
As we celebrate this milestone, we are more motivated than ever to continue our mission. The next 18 months will be crucial as we will focus on our ultimate goal: 230,00 jobs created, matched, and improved. To ensure the success of the project, CFYE will be committed to ensuring sustainable and continuous impact beyond the project, in particular, by supporting businesses in developing and accessing the required capital to continue their growth trajectories. Additionally, our focus will be on learning and gathering insights from our wide portfolio into which business models result in decent employment opportunities for youth. Last, but not least, CFYE will act as a facilitator to establish linkages across sectors and geographies, and prompt businesses in our portfolio to collaborate and trade with businesses in the Netherlands and the European Union more broadly.
Each job created and each young person impacted represents more than just a number – it’s a life changed, a family uplifted, and a community strengthened. With the invaluable work of our implementing partners across 11 countries and our dedicated team, we’re one step closer to reaching our goal of 230,000 jobs by 2026. Together, we have shown and will continue showing that the power of humans behind job creation projects is truly transformative.
