Entrepreneurship to help young people escape poverty and exclusion

Project description

There are currently 1.2 billion young people between the ages of 15 and 24 worldwide. Among them, 550 million are living below the poverty threshold of US$1.90 per day and suffer from malnutrition, illness, violence, and abuse. To secure their future, they need access to training and decent jobs.

To address this emergency, LP4Y is working with young people between the ages of 17 and 24 living in extreme poverty and victims of exclusion (young mothers, youth living on the street, ex-convicts, those without any family support), to place them at the center of a social and occupational integration ecosystem.

Thanks to an innovative educational method based on entrepreneurship, these youth are enrolled in a training program called “Professional Training for Entrepreneurs” for an average of 18 months. The program is based on three pillars: business management (WORK), remedial education and essential business skills development (LEARN), and individual and collective personal development (GUIDE).

Objectives

The association’s activities have three main goals:

• Professional and social integration of underprivileged youth living in exclusion: 1,450 youth have received assistance since 2009, and over 500 were integrated into the workforce by the end of 2017.
• Training of trainers in the social and occupational integration of excluded youth.
• Advocacy for the integration of at-risk youth.

Find out more about LP4Y

LP4Y was created by a group of friends and entrepreneurs concerned by the situation of the Youth in the world.

Their vision is: Youth facing extreme poverty are capable of becoming great entrepreneurs as long as someone offers them a smile, a supportive word, room to grow and trust. LP4Y’s partners (universities, companies, NGOs, local government units…) are as well part of the integration ecosystem.

LP4Y is a founding member of the Youth 4 Change (Y4CN) network, which brings together actors committed to the economic and social insertion of Youth around the world