Better together for youth – Empowering future generations through collective action

Today’s rapidly changing world confronts young people with many challenges spanning across various aspects of their lives. From economic instability and educational disparities to mental health issues and environmental concerns, today’s youth face both new and old complex obstacles yet to be overcome. These challenges are not confined to any single region or community; they are global in nature, affecting young individuals with various backgrounds and circumstances.

By working together, we can create a more inclusive, fair and sustainable future for all. It is our collective responsibility to ensure that young people have the resources, opportunities and support they need to thrive in an increasingly complex world.

The Youth Alliance, hosted by Impact Europe, aims to empower youth by co-funding and co-investing in projects, sharing knowledge, driving systemic change and integrating youth voices in decision-making. The Alliance is testament to the fact that together we can make a difference for young people, with young people. As a community of practice, we want to collaborate and learn while growing and becoming more successful in supporting disadvantaged youth and social entrepreneurs across Europe.

Supporting disadvantaged youth and youth social entrepreneurs

This position paper reflects a collaborative effort among Youth Alliance members and the Esade Centre for Social Impact (ECSI), a key European academic partner actively engaged in researching and strengthening social impact. The Youth Alliance, together with ECSI, circulated a survey among Youth Alliance members and conducted interviews with a selected number of members. Primary and secondary data (e.g., documents and publications of Alliance members) were key to develop useful strategic insights to further empower youth and strengthen the Alliance.

The paper outlines the Youth Alliance’s efforts to support disadvantaged youth and youth social entrepreneurs. It builds on research to provide best practices, insights and new developments on collaboration, co-investing, impact management and measurement and advocacy. The paper is intended for a diverse audience of impact capital providers and supporters (from public to private sectors), as well as policymakers committed to youth empowerment. 

There are four main objectives and solution approaches emerging from this work:

• Youth challenges transcend individual or localised circumstances, calling for a more systemic approach to address them. To effectively tackle youth-related issues, it is essential to go beyond addressing symptoms and delve into root causes through building partnerships and cross-sector collaboration, thereby allowing for a more comprehensive understanding of these issues, while enabling tailored and impactful solutions. Youth should be actively engaged in shaping projects and programs to better fit their needs.
• The Youth Alliance offers a compelling model of collaboration, sharing knowledge and orchestrating funding solutions that are complementary across the capital chain. By creating a platform for peer learning and knowledge sharing, we try to reduce complexity while aligning along shared interests and goals. Innovative financing approaches like co-funding, co-investing and public-private partnerships are pivotal, as they enable larger, more sustainable projects but also reduce risks for investors and funders, while maximising impact.
• Collective efforts should be evaluated collectively. The Youth Alliance emphasises the importance of measuring and managing impact to understand the changes created by its activities and refine them to increase positive outcomes. Embedding impact measurement and management in its operations is vital for learning from current results and understanding what to improve in the future. To achieve systemic change, it is important to align along shared goals and a shared set of indicators for measuring impact across initiatives. Integrating a systems-change lens could enable the Youth Alliance to understand how investments influence systemic and structural barriers. Timely and adaptive data collection is essential for refining collective initiatives, strengthening responsiveness and assessing the effectiveness of collective strategies. An iterative process, forming a collective Theory of Change, could further clarify objectives, actions and KPIs, enabling better evaluation of investments’ expected impact.
• Advocate for youth. We want to provide an additional perspective for policymakers by engaging with them to drive meaningful policy change while learning from young people and organisations we support and work with. We need to engage with policymakers to drive meaningful policy changes that align with youth needs, while fostering learning and collaboration between impact capital providers and policymakers to improve joint projects and their impact. Simpler regulation, cross-border impact finance and better leveraging of public and private funding mechanisms are needed for fostering more public-private partnerships to support youth better. Additionally, building coalitions and learning networks to amplify the impact of youth initiatives can ensure policy frameworks tailored to the needs of young people left behind.

Let’s get to work!

We want to empower the next generation of citizens, entrepreneurs and employees by supporting disadvantaged youth and social entrepreneurs. Investing in education benefits young people by boosting employability, earnings and health. We need to reduce systemic barriers in education and in the labour market by collaborating to better support disadvantaged youth. Social entrepreneurship is an opportunity to foster economic independence while creating businesses that generate both economic value and social impact. Our solutions not only focus on immediate needs but emphasise long-term sustainability and growth.

We aim to inspire new impact capital providers and supporters interested in collectively addressing youth challenges to join the Youth Alliance, as well as provide an additional perspective for policymakers to drive meaningful policy change for better youth empowerment across Europe.