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  • Futuremakers

    Improving economic participation

    We empower young people to find employment, create jobs and transform their communities.

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Futuremakers by Standard Chartered

Futuremakers is our global youth economic empowerment initiative, tackling inequality and promoting greater economic inclusion.

Between 2024 and 2030, we aim to provide USD120 million in Futuremakers to enable and support 140,000 decent jobs, including 70,000 jobs accessed by young women and 70,000 jobs created through supported microbusinesses.​

We’ll do this by enabling disadvantaged young entrepreneurs and job-seekers, predominantly women, to learn, earn and grow to improve their economic skills and prospects.

Impact

From 2019 to 2024, Futuremakers supported more than 53,000 young  people to access decent jobs and enabled more than 35,000 jobs through supported microbusiness.

We refined our results monitoring framework and developed a model to quantify the broader contribution to society. Based on the results achieved in 2024, it is estimated that over 110,000 lives have been impacted by Futuremakers through jobs created, household members benefiting and jobs enabled in the value chain of microbusinesses.

futuremakers black woman on call

In 2024, our Futuremakers employability and entrepreneurship programmes have supported over 24,000 young people (58 per cent women and 9 per cent people with disabilities) to establish an employment plan and more than 14,000 microbusinesses to establish a business growth plan. In total, we have enabled and supported 20,675 decent jobs, including

  • 7,425 young female participants in decent employment​
  • 13,250 direct jobs enabled through supported  microbusinesses​
Read the Futuremakers impact report ​

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futuremakers-lady-gardening

About Futuremakers by Standard Chartered

Our history across our unique geographical footprint means we have people, skills and connection with employers in markets where one of the biggest economic challenges is growing youth unemployment. Globally, 282 million young people are not in employment, education or training, of whom over 60 per cent are in our markets, the majority (68 per cent) female.

How we work

To lift economic participation we enable young women to learn, earn and grow, helping job-seekers to be more employable and micro-entrepreneurs to build businesses that create more jobs.

Launched in 2019, Futuremakers is delivered in partnership with the Standard Chartered Foundation, NGOs and our business and client networks, and harnesses the skills and knowledge of our colleagues.  All programmes have a strong focus on disability, gender and financial inclusion, and green and sustainable jobs.

  • Asian lady working at cashier

    Employability

    Empowering 70,000 disadvantaged young women to gain skills and sustainable employment by 2030.

    With our partners, we provide training, mentoring, upskilling and career planning to support young people to become job ready.

  • futuremakers-black-female-business-owner

    Entrepreneurship

    Supporting entrepreneurs to build microbusinesses to create 70,000 jobs by 2030.

    We offer broader business skills training, help building financial knowledge, and access to finance and networks for micro-entrepreneurs. 

Our financial commitment

In 2024, we contributed USD18.4 million to Futuremakers, including donations from the Group and fundraising of USD2.2 million from our employees and partners. Funds raised go to the Standard Chartered Foundation, NGOs and charity partners to deliver Futuremakers projects.