We believe everyone deserves the opportunity to realise their potential. Yet globally, more than 200 million young people are out of work or live in poverty, and that’s just not good enough.
Watch our video to find out what we are doing about it.
In 2019, we launched and began to roll out our 2019 – 2023 community investment approach, Futuremakers by Standard Chartered. Futuremakers by Standard Chartered is our global initiative to tackle inequality and promote greater economic inclusion in our market. We will do this by supporting disadvantaged young people from low-income households, particularly girls and people with visual disability, to take part in programmes focused on education, employability and entrepreneurship. Our ambition is to raise USD50 million between 2019 and 2023 to empower the next generation to learn, earn and grow.
We have three core pillars to our Futuremakers by Standard Chartered community engagement, Education, Employability & Entrepreneurship. Read more about our global community programmes, below.
Visit our dedicated site to learn more about Goal, our flagship education programme for girls, read stories about how Goal is changing lives and download the free curriculum
The Gates Foundation published their 2019 Goal Keepers report – Examining Inequality. How Geography and Gender Stack The Deck For (Or Against) You. A key highlight from this report was that ‘no matter where you are born, your life will be harder if you are born a girl. If you are born in a poor country or district, it will be even harder.’ It also highlighted that adolescence is when girls’ and boys’ futures really start to diverge – with boys’ futures expanding, and that for girls’ contracting.
This is a key reason why we focus on empowering adolescent girls (12 – 19 years old) with life skills. We are primarily doing this through our Goal programme where we work to empower young women through education and sports. In 2019, we reached over 4,400 girls through our programme. Since 2015 our Goal programme has supported over 16,000 girls and young women with life skills training.
We also deliver financial education training to young people through our staff who volunteer their time and skills to influence behavioural change and engrain financial responsibility at a young age. Since we began in 2016, we have reached 28,000 youth across the country and worked to build their financial education capabilities.
The Employability pillar focuses on work readiness and vocational training schemes for youth – aged between 16 to 30 years and encourages prioritising women and people with visual impairments and/or disability. We expanded our Goal programme to include employability and entrepreneurship capability building for our Goal beneficiaries. Since 2015, more than 460 young women have received vocational training and entrepreneurship skills training to support their future pathways.
We recognised the 2019 World Youth Skills Day by hosting a skills café for over 200 Form 4 students from five high schools across Nairobi. Over 50 staff volunteered to share their experience and coach the youth on communication skills, career and planning, youth and peer pressure. In 2020, we will launch a new employability programme that will focus on increasing employability opportunities for young people (16 – 25 years) including youth with disabilities.
For this community investment focus area, we provide training, capacity building and financing for micro and small business owners, prioritising women. We continued our commitment to supporting women-led enterprises leveraging technology to grow their business, under our Women in Technology programme. The ten businesses selected in late 2018 to the incubator programme successfully completed the programme in early 2019. In April 2019, we awarded five companies with a monetary award of KES1 million each to grow their businesses.
Since 2017, 30 companies have participated in our programme and we have invested KES27 million to support women-led micro and small businesses through the Women in Technology programme. Our third cohort launched in September 2019 and received 700 applications. A final 10 companies were shortlisted and are currently participating in the incubation programme.
In 2019, the Kenya Women in Technology programme was recognised by the Standard Chartered Group’s Global Recognition Awards under the category: Do the right thing – Women In Tech Incubator – Empowering female entrepreneurs across Africa & Middle East. Following its successful launch in Kenya, the Women in Technology programme has been rolled out across our Africa & Middle East region. From Kenya, the programme has now expanded to Nigeria, Pakistan and United Arab Emirates.
Click here to find out more about our Women in Technology Incubator Program
We also run a financial education for entrepreneurs programme targeting non-client micro and small businesses in our communities. This is delivered by employee volunteers. Since we began in 2016, we have trained over 270 micro and small businesses.
We work with local partners and employee volunteers to deliver programmes focused on health and education
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