Solutions for Youth Employment (S4YE) is a multi-stakeholder coalition among public sector, private sector, and civil society actors that aims to provide leadership and resources for catalytic action to increase the number of young people engaged in productive work. The S4YE coalition was founded, in partnership, by Accenture, International Labour Organization (ILO), International Youth Foundation (IYF), Plan International, RAND Corporation, the World Bank, and Youth Business International (YBI). The mission of S4YE is to provide leadership and catalytic action and mobilize efforts to significantly increase the number of young people engaged in productive work by 2030.

S4YE’s role is to advance and accelerate the development of solutions that have the greatest potential to deliver high quality productive work at scale, for young people. S4YE’s unique approach to fulfilling this role is to:Link: S4YE will link public, private, and civil sectors to integrate lessons learned, identify effective solutions, and accelerate impact on the ground through cross-sector collaboration and innovation.Learn: S4YE will pursue a compelling learning agenda both by collecting and disseminating knowledge across the broad youth employment landscape, and through a targeted portfolio of high-impact initiatives. S4YE will generate and share open knowledge and data, as well as related practical insights across the globe.Leverage: S4YE will leverage its knowledge and partners to catalyse the promotion of public, private, and civil sector innovations and operations that scale promising youth employment practices. S4YE's approach of linking, learning, and leveraging is cyclical, with each action building off each other. Every learning opportunity becomes an opportunity to leverage further resources for youth and to bring new partners in to operations. Every linking opportunity becomes another opportunity to learn new lessons, or reinforce existing ones. And every leveraging opportunity becomes a chance for further learning and collaboration.

S4YE operates through its partners and network, working in the frontier areas to promote increased collaboration. S4YE will cultivate cross-sector partnerships with key stakeholders that support the execution of our coalition’s goal, including: civil society partners, government officials, foundations, private sector entities, international organisations, and young people. As one of its four priority areas, S4YE strives to accelerate innovation in the youth employment ecosystem. To do so, by 2020, S4YE will create an innovative platform for collaboration, knowledge share, and participation. The coalition will design an innovative web-based hub that will foster real time interaction between its partners and network, engaging them on the technical tools and social elements of youth employment. This will be a one-stop shop for support, knowledge, network, and engagement on all things related to youth employment. The website will contain all of the annual deliverables, including but not limited to the Open Source Directory, the flagship report, and the Public Private Partnership framework. It will foster a network of 2,500 supporters by 2020, who will be actively engaged with S4YE’s social media presence, including curated content from partners, supporters, and young people. S4YE will use this hub to capture all of its work and communications with its external network. Moreover, one of S4YE's four frontier areas focuses on Digital Age Impact, where the S4YE coalition will explore the impact of digital age technologies on youth employment and how young women and men can be supported and better prepared to respond. This includes learning about the impact of the digital age on the formal and informal sectors as related to the access and delivery of information and services, as well as generating knowledge about efficiencies and effectiveness gains that can be made in the delivery of services and programmes, including those through vocational training. It also includes better understanding of the comparative impacts of the digital age on women and men. The effects of the digital age on public employment agencies and their services will be investigated. S4YE will also seek to understand the changing nature of employment relationships given new technological trends and their tangible effects on young workers today. In addition to the need to develop digital skills, S4YE recognises that the importance of basic skill development cannot be underestimated in achieving the coalition’s goal.

The S4YE is governed by a Board of Directors (BoD), which provides high-level strategic guidance on the focus and the content of the work programme of S4YE. The BoD provides strategic direction to the executive level of S4YE, who take responsibility for executing decision making. The Executive Committee (ExCom) is composed of senior management level delegates of the Board of Directors. The Executive Committee is responsible for all executive level management decisions. The ExCom follows the strategic guidance provided by the BoD through regular oversight of programme activities, including: (i) managing the long term global programme; (ii) managing the consistency and relevance of S4YE activities carried out by the Secretariat; (iii) monitoring the coalition’s strategic performance and that of the Secretariat; (iv) developing S4YE’s presence in new priority regions; and (v) endorsing recommendations from the Secretariat in relation to funding allocations and providing fundraising support. The Secretariat manages the day-to-day operations of the coalition and reports to the ExCom. It is led by the Coalition Manager, who has responsibility for completing a number of tasks including those across the areas of Knowledge Management, Technical Assistance, Financial Management, and Network Management.

* Accenture * Microsoft * Government of Germany * Government of Norway * Government of Albania * Plan International * Youth Business International (YBI) * International Youth Foundation (IYF) * RAND Corporation * International Labour Organization (ILO) * Hilton * Rockefeller Foundation * MasterCard Foundation * Mozilla Foundation * Envoy for Youth, United Nations * World Bank * E&Y * Intel * Walmart * Hogan Lovells * Marks & Spencer’s * SAB Miller * GAN * Making Cents