As the Challenge Fund for Youth Employment (CFYE) project celebrates its five-year anniversary, the team is also celebrating a monumental milestone: the creation, matching, and improvement of 100,000 jobs!

The CFYE is a 7-year flagship initiative by the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and managed by Palladium, Randstad, and VSO in a consortium. The team’s 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 both 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,” says Team Leader Joost Verwilghen. “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.”

The CFYE recently gathered in Utrecht, Netherlands for their Annual Retreat where they celebrated the success and recognised 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 is our strength,” adds Verwilghen. “In the past five years, amidst external challenges that spanned COVID-19, economic and political ups and downs, conflict, changing donors and receiving countries interests and behaviours, and project-specific challenges, we have been able to overcome difficulties in creative and innovative ways.”

He adds that the next 18 months will be crucial as the team focuses on their ultimate goal of creating, matching, or improving 230,00 jobs, with an even stronger focus on achieving their 50% gender target and on enabling opportunities in both the green and digital sectors.

To ensure the continued success of the project, CFYE is committed to ensuring sustainable and continuous impact beyond the project, in particular, by supporting businesses in developing and accessing the required capital to continue growing.

Additionally, the team will be focused on learning and gathering insights from their wide portfolio of business models which have resulted in decent employment opportunities for youth. Last, but not least, CFYE will act as a facilitator to establish links and connections across sectors and geographies, and prompt businesses in the 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,” adds Verwilghen.

“Together, we have shown and will continue showing that the power of humans behind job creation projects is truly transformative.”

Learn more about CFYE or contact info@thepalladiumgroup.com.