YES! – for Selfempowerment through Entrepreneurship

CAN ENTREPRENEURSHIP SOLVE YOUTH UNEMPLOYMENT?

After long discussions, together with all community members, we have collectively agreed that YES! and we have decided to contribute to make it real!
We inspire and support the young unemployed to self-employment and self-empowerment through cooperatively created enterprises! We are motivated to overcome the youth unemployment through awakening their entrepreneurial potential and developing new skills! We provide a favourable environment for co-working and co-designing self-employment ideas that we support to transform into projects, start-ups and further enterprises!

YES 1-7

1. YES is a community of young people dedicated to selfempowerment through Entrepreneurship.
2. They finance themselves mainly through the membership fee of their association, which belongs to all members.
3. Every youth has the right with his membership to post his project on the YES homepage with his biography.
4. All members decide over the money and have a budget where 15% is for YES administration work and 85% is used for joined projects.
5. By e-voting all members decide which project will be financed with which amount.
6. Projects can only be financed if the necessary budget is available.
7. YES members inspire others to join the association enabling YES to have enough budget for helping young people on their journey to selfempowerment and Entrepreneurship.

WHY are we so motivated?

Well, here are some facts! According to ILO (Report, 2017):

• Globally, 70.9 million young people are estimated to be unemployed in 2017.
• The youth unemployment rate is 13.1% globally in 2017 – and it is highest in the Arab States, at 30.0%.
• Across OECD countries, almost 18% of unemployed youth have been without work for a year or longer.
• 76.7% of working youth are in informal jobs, compared with 57.9% of working adults.
• In 2017, 16.7% of working youth in emerging and developing countries live below the extreme poverty threshold of US$1.90 per day
• New figures 2019 see links below: (source: Statista)
  • Link to unemployed youth worldwide
    https://www.statista.com/statistics/279823/number-of-young-unemployed-people-worldwide/
  • Link to youth unemployment rates May 2019 European Union Countries in %
    https://www.statista.com/statistics/266228/youth-unemployment-rate-in-eu-countries/
  • This statistic shows the seasonally adjusted youth unemployment figures (under 25 years) in the European Union and the Euro area from May 2018 to May 2019. In May 2019, around 3.22 million young people in the EU were unemployed.
    https://www.statista.com/statistics/275315/youth-unemployment-figures-in-the-eu-and-euro-area/
  • Link to Youth unemployment in the U.K.
    https://www.statista.com/statistics/280436/monthly-youth-unemployment-figures-in-the-united-kingdom-uk/
  • Link to Youth unemployment in the United States
    https://www.statista.com/statistics/217448/seasonally-adjusted-monthly-youth-unemployment-rate-in-the-us/

WHY entrepreneurship as a solution?

World Economic Forum has ‘announced’ entrepreneurship as a crucial driving force behind job growth. Therefore, enabling start-ups to quickly scale up is one of the most important mechanisms for policy-makers and business leaders to focus on. Following that approach, our Co-founder Monika Tkacz says

‘We in Yes, we understand entrepreneurship as  Mindset that actively seeks opportunities, solutions, development or improvement! Entrepreneurship is not just a job creation tool but it is also a way to build a generation of young people not afraid of taking risks, leaving their comfort zones, experimenting and learning from failures. Only with that approach they can start the process of self-employment and we are here to support them throughout the process!‘

Challenges? Of course there are many! Overcoming youth unemployment is a long-lasting process. In each country the scale of the problem is different and the way of encouraging people to self-empowerment  also requires from us different approach!

What is the Action Plan? In Yes we believe in little steps that once accumulated can bring a huge collective action. We want to organize our ‘movement’ by Country Chapters with respect to the cultural differences and in cooperation with local ambassadors. In 2020 we plan gatherings in Germany, Greece and India.