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About the Challenge Fund for Youth Employment

Goal

The Fund aims to create a prosperous future for 230,000 young women and men in the Middle East, North Africa, Sahel & West Africa and Horn of Africa. This will be achieved by supporting youth employment initiatives in these regions. Initiatives will offer youth, particularly young women, opportunities for decent work that delivers better prospects for personal development, is productive, and offers a stable income, social protection and safe working conditions.

How does it work?

Private sector, civil society and knowledge institutions will be invited to submit proposals for initiatives to address specific challenges framed around creating scalable solutions for more and better jobs for youth. Solutions will be built around integrated approaches designed to bridge the mismatch between the demand for high quality jobs and the supply of skilled labour. They will be aligned with aspirations of young women and men in the regions.

Support

Technical support will be available for applicants throughout the process. The Fund Manager will organise physical and online information sessions for potential applicants. Interested parties are welcome to contact the Fund Manager to discuss ideas and seek guidance or support for concept note development. Once projects are selected for implementation, tailored technical support will also be made available to maximise delivery of results.

More about the fund

The Challenge Fund for Youth Employment (CFYE) is a 7-year programme funded by the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Fund is managed by the Palladium Group, Randstad and VSO.

Match

Create

Improve

How to apply?

Process of application

Twice a year the Fund will open a thematic call for concept notes whereby applicants are invited to submit their ideas for projects responding to a challenge in a specific country or region. The call for concept notes will be published on the website and through social media channels.

Once submitted, concept notes will be assessed by a panel of experts and youth representatives. Successful applicants will be invited to submit a full business case. This should describe the pathway to results, the budget and the financing strategy. On average, the contribution of the Challenge Fund will be one third of the total project budget.

Who can apply?

There are no restrictions to who can apply to the Fund. Ideas are invited from private sector organisations, civil society and knowledge institutions or from a consortium involving two or more partners. Regardless the status of the applicant, all concept notes and business cases will be assessed against the same criteria.

Since proposed initiatives should have a clear pathway to decent work for youth, both youth themselves and employers will be involved in the design of the project. All projects will need to report on their results and the financial contributions made by the Fund will be clearly linked to the achievement of those results.

In addition, the Fund is looking for sustainable and scalable initiatives implemented by partners who will be able to contribute on average two thirds of the total project budget.

News

Learning Brief: Technical Assistance That Sticks: CFYE’s TA Design for Uptake, Adoption, & Impact

Learning material Various Countries

Faatimah Clarke

May 8, 2026

Across private-sector development programmes, technical assistance (TA) is often designed with good intentions, but is ineffective in terms of driving longer-term behaviour change. This is typically due to generic content, poorly-timed delivery, or being shaped more by the offer developed by TA providers rather than the support the business actually needs. As a result, TA risks becoming a box ticking exercise rather than a catalyst for sustainable impact. Drawing on six years of delivering TA to more than 120 businesses across the Challenge Fund for Youth Employment (CFYE) portfolio, this learning brief distills what has driven uptake, adoption, and improved employment outcomes for CFYE’s implementing partners (IPs). It shows how strategically offered and commercially relevant TA shows potential to shift business practices, unlock growth, and make job outcomes more inclusive and sustainable. The brief is intended for fund managers, practitioners, and donors designing TA facilities for private sector development programmes.

Learning Brief: Aligning Incentives for Youth Employment: CFYE’s Payment by Results & Co-Financing Model

Learning material Various Countries

Faatimah Clarke

April 17, 2026

Across the countries where the Challenge Fund for Youth Employment (CFYE) operates, most young people are not unemployed but under-employed, working in informal, low-paid, insecure or hazardous jobs with limited prospects for progression.Improving the quality of existing work is therefore often as important as creating new jobs. In practice, several CFYE-supported business models, particularly intermediaries working with SMEs or partners working in informal value chains, improvements to existing jobs accounted for a large share of outcomes. This learning brief outlines CFYE’s approach to promoting job decency and strengthening job quality across a diverse portfolio, highlighting lessons on how programmes can support meaningful improvements for workers while remaining aligned with business realities.

Learning Brief: Selecting the Right Partners to Co-Fund

Learning material Various Countries

Faatimah Clarke

April 8, 2026

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