Deadline: 7-Nov-22
Applications are now open for the Challenge Fund for Youth Employment (CFYE) Call for Solutions in Egypt.
CFYE aims to co-invest in innovative, private sector-led partnerships that aim to address the youth unemployment challenge by creating, matching, and improving jobs for youth.
This is CFYE’s second Call for Solutions in Egypt after the successful first Call for Solutions in 2020. CFYE will work through private sector firms in any sector that can create employment opportunities for youth and particularly women provided their business models are scalable and sustainable. Proposals for initiatives/projects should address specific challenges framed around creating scalable business solutions for more and better jobs for youth with a specific focus on women.
Goal
The goal of the Challenge Fund for Youth Employment is to support robust and innovative ideas for creating or improving decent work prospects for youth, especially young women. For the purposes of this program, youth is defined as between the ages of 15 – 35. Over the next 6 years, we’ll work with selected Implementing Partners across the Middle East, North Africa, Sahel/West Africa and the Horn of Africa to tackle the challenge of youth underemployment and unemployment in these regions. CFYE’s projects will enable 200,000 young people to access new or better employment, including wage or salary jobs, or self-employment.
Funding Information
- The minimum total project value should be €400,000, with a minimum contribution from CFYE of €200,000.
The Challenge
- Egypt’s population stands at 104.2 million, with a workforce constituting 28% of the total population. The unemployment rate for Egyptian youth (15-24 years of age) is approximately 24% (15.2% males and 57.8% females). The Egyptian economy has been recovering steadily since the January 25th revolution in 2011 but has suffered several shocks over the last few years starting with Covid-19 and up to the Russian-Ukrainian war. Under such circumstances, unemployment increased and especially among the youth.
- Egypt has a youthful population, with a median age of 24.6 years. Youth of working age (15–34 years) accounted for an estimated 37.5% of the total population. However, Youth underemployment is a big concern for two main reasons. First, many youth – in particular women – do not look for formal employment or jobs, nor do they seek work abroad. In fact, many young women withdraw from the labor market when they get married or have children.
- Second, the informal sector absorbs most of the jobs that youth work in, often below their qualification level. Hence, despite all the improvements that are taking place at the governmental and policy levels, the jobs market is not growing fast enough for the surge of new entrants to the labor market. Thus, there is an urgent need for new solutions for youth, particularly female, employment especially when the labor force in Egypt is both readily available and highly affordable by global standards.
CYFE Principles
- Actively Support Women
- CFYE strives to support equal opportunities for young women in the job market; CFYE’s ambition is to ensure that at least 50% of the youth reached in target countries are young women, and that women-led businesses are actively supported to apply for CFYE.
- Maximize Additionality
- CFYE will only support solutions and initiatives that would not be delivered within the same timelines, at the same scale, or delivering the same impact level, without support from CFYE.
- Clear Pathways to Employment
- CFYE identifies and supports initiatives that present a clear pathway to creating, matching and improving jobs. CFYE looks for solutions that present a deeper analysis of youth employment challenges and present a sustainable solution that will lead to sustainable business growth and employment outcomes.
- Collaboration with the Private Sector
- CFYE actively targets private sector entities or consortia involving a private sector entity. While CFYE welcomes ideas from any organisation, CFYE is looking for market-based solutions, tailored to the context of every country. CFYE prioritizes initiatives that are led by or actively engage private sector. These entities can be local or international.
- Youth Engagement
- Actively involving youth, and especially young women, is a prerequisite for being considered as a CFYE partner. Interventions should demonstrate how youth were involved in developing the proposed solution and how these solutions are likely to contribute to the goals and aspirations of young people.
- Sustainability
- As part of the design of a project/investment, prospective Implementing Partners will be required to demonstrate how their initiatives will become independent of external funding as part of their business case. It is of importance that projects have the necessary means to sustain their job outcomes beyond CFYE’s funding.
What they’re looking for?
CFYE takes a holistic approach to assessing the concept notes and business cases received. CFYE evaluates the proposals based on a detailed criteria that considers the technical design, delivery feasibility and associated commercial proposal. Key elements of CFYE’s evaluation and selection criteria are given below:
- Additionality: Will your project be able to reach the same goals, within the same timeframe and with the same quality without CFYE’s funding?
- Business Model: Can your idea demonstrate commercial viability in a competitive market environment, to create the highest value of returns to its stakeholders?
- Targets & Impact: Are you proposing ambitious and realistic job targets which are clearly aligned with CFYE employment outcomes?
- Scope & Pathways to Employment: Is your project able to layout a defensible and logical theory of change addressing the key challenges identified and leads to employment outcomes?
- Social Impact Aspects: To what extent do you understand and center your initiative around the true needs, challenges and aspirations of the young women and men you intend to work with?
- Sustainability, Scale & Resilience: Is your project likely to create scalable positive impact beyond CFYE’s contribution?
- Value for Money: Are you proposing reasonable and justifiable cost drivers and cost per job?
Eligibility Criteria
- Private-Sector-Led: Only projects presented by legally registered private sector firms are eligible. Applicants can either be individual or consortiums. Consortiums must be led by private sector firms and can include organizations from the civil society and knowledge institutions as consortium partners, they should include two or more partners
- Business Maturity Stage: The lead applicant needs to be in their scale up or growth stage with at least 3 years of business operations. Activities presented in solutions need to be tested concepts. Applicants must have the financial capability to successfully operated their proposed projects.
- Leverage/Financial Capability: The minimum total project value should be €400,000, with a minimum contribution from CFYE of €200,000. This should be matched by a co-investment from the applicant that is at least equal to the grant requested from CFYE. In-kind contributions are allowed but should not exceed 30% of the leveraged resources.
- Consortium Composition: The Lead Applicant must be a private sector firm. The Lead Applicant is required to demonstrate that they can work with their consortium members, showing previous successful working collaborations is a plus. Solution implementation and co-financing are the responsibility of the Lead Applicant.
- The following are not mandatory criteria but are considered as a plus for the applicant:
- Actively support women: Women-led businesses are actively encouraged to apply for CFYE.
- Presence outside the Greater Cairo area: Applicants with nationwide presence and operations (outside the Greater Cairo area) are actively encouraged to apply.
- Businesses with specific social objectives that serve their primary purpose or those who seek to maximize profits while maximizing benefits to their society are strongly encouraged to apply.
For more information, visit https://fundforyouthemployment.nl/call-for-solutions-egypt/