The Global Youth Empowerment Fund For Social Entrepreneurs

The Global Youth Empowerment Fund is open for Requests for Proposal of up to US $5000 grants.

Applications close April 17, 2017!

The Global Youth Empowerment Fund is an initiative to empower young people around the world to impact their communities by investing in grassroots, community projects to create positive change as they address the greatest challenges in their communities and unite all sectors of society to create sustainable impact by advancing the Global Goals for Sustainable Development. A partnership of JCI and the SDG Action Campaign (formerly the UN Millennium Campaign), the Fund will offer grants, financing and training to youth-led projects and social enterprises that advance the Global Goals for Sustainable Development in local communities around the world.

Global Youth Empowerment Fund Project Requirements

All Projects Must:

• Be run by one of the following:
  • Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and non-profit private bodies whose activities contribute to the promotion of sustainable development and youth leadership;
    • Examples include: JCI Local Organization, SDG Action Campaign partners, youth-run registered non-profit
  • Public bodies with specific responsibility for the promotion of youth engagement in advancing the Global Goals for Sustainable Development;
• Be created and led by youth between the ages of 18 to 40.
• Demonstrate community impact and project planning criteria in line with the JCI Active Citizen Framework. The JCI Active Citizen Framework is a planning mechanism for community-based organizations to identify their community’s greatest needs and align their projects to the global development agenda creating global impact.
• Adhere to the goals of JCI and SDG Action Campaign in developing grassroots projects that advance at least one of the Global Goals for Sustainable Development through the JCI Active Citizen Framework.
• Include like-minded community partners who agree to support the applicant’s project. Types of partnership can include financial support, in-kind support or marketing and communications support.
• Include plans for organization’s own support of the project, including both financial (e.g. fundraising or sponsorship acquisition) and non-financial (e.g. volunteer hours or in-kind sponsorship) support. The applicant organization is expected to supply at least 50% of the value of the requested funding in their own support.
• Have mechanisms for monitoring and evaluation and follow-up after funding has been dispersed. All funded projects must submit the required project updates and final reports.

Preference will be given to projects that demonstrate the following qualities:

• Innovation: The project should represent innovative methods to the problem it seeks to address. Innovation may result from the use of new methods, new models, new technologies, or application of old methods, models or technologies in a new, innovative way.
• Potential for scaling up and/or replication: The program should ideally be feasible on a broad-scale basis and/or be replicable to other social, cultural or geographical settings on a local level or through policy advocacy on the global, regional, or local level.
• Financial Viability: The project must be built on a sound and viable plan either using the JCI Active Citizen Framework and ideally should have the potential to continue beyond the Global Youth Empowerment Fund funding.

Global Youth Empowerment Fund 2017 Timeline:
March 1-April 17: Requests for Proposals open
June 5: Deadline for full grant application
Late June: Notification to top applicants that their project was selected and will be eligible for public voting for a portion of their final score
August 4: 2017 Global Youth Empowerment Fund grantees announced at the 2017 JCI Global Partnership Summit
Find out more