| Baltimore, Maryland, USA, 30 July 2001 -- The International Youth Foundation (IYF) today announced it has received a US$10 million grant to provide modern job skills to disadvantaged youth in Latin America and the Caribbean. The grant from the Multilateral Investment Fund (MIF) -- a unit of the Inter-American Development Bank -- is the largest it has ever made and brings IYF significantly closer to its goal of raising nearly $24 million for the program.
By forging partnerships between local nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), governments and multinational corporations, IYF will work to bridge the gap between the large numbers of unemployed youth in the region and the growing demand for workers familiar with computers, the internet and other common workplace technologies. The initiative will teach skills ranging from programming to hardware testing to data entry. The projects will also assist young people in securing jobs upon completion of their training.
“Information processing, in all forms and at all levels, is the business of the twenty-first century,” said David Bell, Chairman of the Board of IYF and Chairman of the Financial Times Group in London. “And young people are particularly good at it: they grasp the concepts, their culture is fast-paced, and they’re flexible. Through this multi-sector partnership approach, we’re able to achieve the scale necessary to have a significant and long-term impact on the employment prospects of the region’s youth.”
IYF will administer the youth employment program and will match the MIF contribution of $10 million on a dollar-to-dollar basis by forging partnerships with businesses, foundations and governments of the Americas, Europe and Japan. It has already secured several such commitments. The 40 NGOs of Latin America and the Caribbean that will carry out the projects will raise an additional $3.75 million. This will bring total funding for the program close to $24 million.
An estimated 12,000 young people will participate in medium- and long-term training and job placement programs that will provide a pool of skilled workers for the economy of the region. IYF will direct studies, conferences, and publications that will analyze, document, and disseminate the lessons learned from the 40 projects. In this way the program seeks to increase knowledge of the best practices in training youth, placing them in productive jobs, and sustaining these efforts over time.
“This program will equip thousands of young people in Latin America and the Caribbean with the technical and life skills necessary to find and succeed in jobs with a future,” said Rick Little, founder and president of IYF. “And that translates into a win-win situation for businesses, for economies and for societies as a whole. It offers hope.”
The Multilateral Investment Fund, an autonomous fund administered by the Inter-American Development Bank, provides grants and investments to promote private sector growth, labor force training and small enterprise modernization in Latin America and the Caribbean.
The International Youth Foundation, founded in 1990, is one of the world’s largest public foundations supporting programs that improve conditions and prospects for young people. Currently operating in 60 countries, IYF and its global network of partner organizations have helped more than 21 million young people gain access to basic life skills, education, and job training opportunities that are critical to their success. IYF currently works with a regional network of 11 partner foundations in 9 Latin American and Caribbean countries. |
