Accenture

Empowering Youth through Skills and Opportunities

Skills can open doors to a better future – and combined with the power of technology, can help create a more economically inclusive world for all.

Accenture and UNICEF’s Generation Unlimited (GenU) have announced a new phase of their global partnership on International Youth Day 2024, aimed at connecting 580,000 youth to skilling and earning opportunities.

Building on the success of their initial collaboration launched in 2021, the expanded four-year global partnership will continue to support young people in employment, entrepreneurship, and social impact. Accenture is scaling up its support for UNICEF’s Generation Unlimited by providing US$7.8 million to drive positive change for young people in Brazil, Egypt, India, Philippines, South Africa and Türkiye. 

Accenture plays an active role in the partnership with GenU beyond funding, offering its core capabilities around digital learning, human-centred design and monitoring and evaluation to the projects it funds.

Key Initiatives driving positive change

• imaGen Ventures: Connecting more than 188,000 young people to entrepreneurial activities through grants, seed funding, and mentorship, equipping nearly 43,000 participants with market-relevant skills enabling 800 to start their entrepreneurship journey. In 2024, UNICEF reported more than 48,000 young people participating across 11 countries.
• Youth Marketplace Agency (YOMA): Supporting over 300,000 marginalized young people through a digital global platform to build skills to innovate on environmental challenges, re-enter formal education, find employment, or start a new business. 61,000 will gain new skills, with more than 6,000 taking additional steps toward earning pathways. 
• Passport to Earning (P2E): Reaching more than 92,000 marginalized young people with market-relevant skills, with more than 10,000 completing courses and receiving certificates, and more than 2,000 taking additional steps towards earning pathways. P2E leverages a digital platform to provide free, certifiable, and job-relevant skills to young people, positioning them to access advanced skilling and earning opportunities. Since its launch, the program has skilled more than 2 million young learners in India and Brazil.  

In addition to the three programmes, Accenture’s CEO of Growth Markets, Leo Framil, has been appointed to GenU’s Board, helping set GenU’s strategic direction and advancing the shared ambition to upskill the next generation. With this appointment, Accenture joins GenU’s Founding Partners, playing a crucial role in championing global skills development and mentorship.

“Accenture has been committed to helping underserved populations realize their potential through its ‘Skills to Succeed’ initiative for more than a decade, with NGO partnerships crucial to scaling impact. Building on the success of our partnership with UNICEF’s GenU to date, we are excited to expand the scope of our efforts beyond skilling, to include greater support with the transition into jobs or starting businesses. I am delighted to join the GenU Board and look forward to helping drive systemic change addressing structural barriers to progress on a global level,” said Leo Framil, CEO of Growth Markets at Accenture.

This announcement comes as the world faces an urgent challenge: 1.8 billion young people are standing on the brink of adulthood. Yet, a staggering 60% of young people are projected to lack essential skills by 2030, putting their very prospects for dignified lives at risk. The long-term impacts of this crisis will ripple through our economies, communities, and societies, deepening inequality and locking young people out of the opportunities they need to build a better life[1].

"I am thrilled that our partnership with Accenture is expanding, so that together we can prepare and empower even more young people with the relevant skills they need to enter and thrive in an evolving workforce. We also welcome them as Generation Unlimited's Founding Partner, not only providing resources and strategic expertise to resolve the skills crisis but committing to engaging young people as equal partners in these efforts,” said Kevin Frey, CEO at GenU.

Since 2021, Accenture has supported GenU, as a founding partner of its flagship programme, Passport to Earning. Accenture’s funding contributed to providing more than 2 million young people (aged 15-24) with free and job-relevant skills training, digital certificates, and certifications needed to secure in-demand roles and opportunities for improved livelihoods. The US$3 million of committed funding from the initial phase of the partnership enabled GenU to provide digitally enhanced skills development and the opportunity to access paid work or self-employment for young people in Brazil and India.

UNICEF does not endorse any brand, company, product or service.

About Accenture

Accenture is a leading global professional services company that helps the world’s leading businesses, governments and other organizations build their digital core, optimize their operations, accelerate revenue growth and enhance citizen services—creating tangible value at speed and scale. We are a talent- and innovation-led company with approximately 750,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries. Technology is at the core of change today, and we are one of the world’s leaders in helping drive that change, with strong ecosystem relationships. We combine our strength in technology and leadership in cloud, data and AI with unmatched industry experience, functional expertise and global delivery capability. We are uniquely able to deliver tangible outcomes because of our broad range of services, solutions and assets across Strategy & Consulting, Technology, Operations, Industry X and Song. These capabilities, together with our culture of shared success and commitment to creating 360° value, enable us to help our clients reinvent and build trusted, lasting relationships. We measure our success by the 360° value we create for our clients, each other, our shareholders, partners and communities. Visit us at www.accenture.com.

Additional resources

Learn more about Accenture’s commitment and actions to drive social impact in communities around the world in Accenture’s annual 360° Value Report.

About Generation Unlimited

Launched by the UN Secretary-General at the 2018 UN General Assembly, Generation Unlimited is a leading global Public-Private-Youth Partnership on a mission to skill and connect the world’s 1.8 billion young people to opportunities for employment, entrepreneurship and social impact. Anchored in UNICEF, the partnership brings together global organizations and leaders including Heads of State, CEOs, Heads of UN agencies, and civil society champions with young people to co-create and deliver innovative solutions on a global scale.

[1]Source: https://www.unicef.org/reports/recovering-learning

Last updated 12 August 2024