Call for Solutions: The Challenge Fund for Youth Employment (CYFE) for Nigerians

The Challenge Fund for Youth Employment

Application are now open for the Challenge Fund for Youth Employment 2022.  The Challenge Fund for youth employment aims to co-invest in innovative, private sector-led partnerships that aim to address the youth unemployment challenge by creating, matching, and improving jobs for youth, especially women.

The Challenge find for youth employment is calling for innovative and demand-driven projects from either private sector organizations or private sector-led consortia that will maximize employment opportunities for youth (especially women) under two thematic windows.

Eligibility Criteria

The Challenge Fund for youth employment second Call for Solutions in Nigeria will focus on expanding on the work currently being done by existing partners in the country by supporting scalable private sector led initiatives that can create employment opportunities for youth, particularly those in rural areas with lower levels of education and women. In particular, they are seeking:

• Business models that have been piloted, have proven concepts and are looking to scale.
• Innovative models that aim to address systemic bottlenecks and bring about improvement to whole ecosystems.

Eligibility Requirements

The following eligibility criteria will apply:

• Principles: Should be able to adhere to the Challenge Fund for youth employment guiding principles & priorities.
• Exclusion Criteria: The project and organizations involved in delivering the project must pass the FMO exclusion criteria. 
• Applicant Eligibility: The Challenge Fund for youth employment strongly invite applications from private sector companies, including business accelerators and impact investors, as we believe that private sector involvement is the most effective way to develop and test market-based solutions that respond to the challenge of youth employment. The Challenge Fund for youth employmentactively welcome partnerships or consortium responses to this challenge. Non-profit entities are also welcome to apply, but they must apply in consortium with a private-sector partner with confirmed labour demand as the lead applicant. They strongly prefer to work with fast-growing small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The applicant needs to be in their scale up or growth stage. Activities presented in the projects/solutions need to be tested concepts.

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