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Generation Unlimited is a global partnership that seeks to ensure that every young person is in education, learning, training or employment by 2030.
By 2030 there will be 2 billion young women and men seeking opportunities for a bright future throughout the world.
With education, skills and empowerment, these young people will help transform economies and nations. But a fast-changing global economy demands increasingly specialised skills at a time when many education systems are struggling.
Generation Unlimited brings together the private sector, governments, international and local organisations — and young people — to identify and scale up the best solutions for three major challenges: access to secondary age education, acquisition of employability skills and empowerment, especially of girls.
We are building a new and dynamic model: co-creating innovative solutions; brokering support, mentoring and funding; placing young people at the forefront of change.
Secondary-age education
At least 61 percent of the world’s 12-14 year-olds fail to master basic reading and math skills.
Adolescent girls and boys need support so they can complete primary and secondary education with meaningful learning outcomes.
Generation Unlimited will scale up innovative and attractive alternatives to traditional “chalk and talk” approaches to education, such as flexible learning schedules, technology to connect rural youth, second-chance opportunities, gender-responsive curricula and teacher training.
Skills for learning, employability and decent work
While the global population of young people has grown, their participation in the workforce has declined.
Young people, especially young women, should have access to opportunities to develop skills for learning, employability and active citizenship. They also need support as they transition from education to work.
Generation Unlimited will strengthen apprenticeships and internships, link education systems with job markets and support youth entrepreneurship.
Empowerment, especially for girls
Adolescent girls, boys and other young people need support to understand their rights and build their own assets and agency to make life choices.
This includes opportunities to civically engage, including digitally, and to voice their opinions on issues that affect them.
When they start at a disadvantage, girls need extra support. Generation Unlimited will bring to scale solutions that will help young people, especially young women, gain confidence and open doors to equal opportunities.
Young people at the forefront
The Generation Unlimited partnership will be informed and steered by young people as it works to empower them to be a force for change.
Young people will be co-creators of solutions, actively engaged as “solvers” in the Youth Challenge process.
The Youth Challenge will open space for them to crowd-source new solutions and boost interest among youth.
Young People will participate in all key decisions of the partnership. A combination of online and offline channels will be used to bring young people into governance processes.
Generation Unlimited will influence global policy and practice for young people, and it will demonstrate new standards for linking young people into policy debate at all levels. The partnership will prioritise inclusion of young voices across the spectrum of ideas, cultures and contexts. It will link existing youth networks and organisations to advance a global dialogue on youth participation.
In its global economic outlook for 2017 and 2018, the International Labour Organisation projected that the global economy would accelerate modestly due to moderate pick-ups in investment and trade, mainly led by advanced economies.
However, job growth does not always accompany economic recovery, a situation which affects, especially, young people who are entering the job market in record numbers.
The global youth unemployment rate is still high and in 2017, reached 13.1 percent, although the expected 70.9 million young unemployed is well below the crisis peak of 76.7 million in 2009. — Unecef/ILO.
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