Equipping vulnerable youth with the skills and resources to reach their full potential
Overview
263 million youth are out of school from primary to upper secondary – UNESCO
Globally there are very large numbers of vulnerable youth without access to equitable quality education and employment. This can raise insurmountable barriers to success. An individual's background, including geographic location, race, gender, or family income directly shapes their educational prospects - which has lifelong repercussions.
We believe that education is one of the most powerful drivers for reducing poverty and ensuring equity and inclusion. And it is up to us to collectively take action.
We are working to create a more inclusive society where everyone has the chance to succeed and reach their full potential.
By providing resources, knowledge and skills to disadvantaged youth, we can unlock their potential - empowering them to chart their own course toward sustainable employment.
Our approach
To amplify our impact and reach, we take a dual approach. First, we fund and support programming where vulnerabilities are the greatest, such as our latest initiatives in India and across nine countries in Africa. Second, we move beyond funding to hands-on involvement. We can provide far greater value by leveraging the combined resources, skills and expertise of Zurich employees who actively engage with their local communities.
To achieve our objectives, we work with individuals and organizations to:
- Offer programs with a specific focus on education and training that leads to sustainable employment and/or innovative entrepreneurial initiatives for disadvantaged youth.
- Create ecosystems of support to encourage more young people to stay in education.
- Build partnerships between public and private organizations, governments, and other stakeholders.
Through [JA Africa and Z Zurich Foundation] partnership, we will create entrepreneurship ecosystems that fuel young Africans to become changemakers, creating businesses that solve the continent’s challenges with climate change, food shortages, and inadequate infrastructures for health and education.
Our programs
Through our local grants programs, we build strategic partnerships with like-minded organizations and Zurich business units around the world. We collaborate closely with Zurich employees who volunteer their time and skills to support our program beneficiaries.
The impact figures below have been rounded to the nearest hundred.
Asia Pacific
India - Empowering girls and young women in rural India to pursue their aspirations of education
Implementation partner: Plan India.
Grant duration: 3 years
Projected impact: 50,000 people
This grant will focus on education for girls and young women in rural India and aims to impact over 30,000 lives. Plan India will establish Accelerated Learning Centers for girls in Rajasthan and Jharkhand, and help out-of-school girls to reconnect to school and complete their education, and young women to complete one of many available vocational training courses. The collaboration will also support both cohorts in developing life skills.
The wider aims are to reduce the vulnerabilities of young girls forced into child marriage and trafficking for domestic labor, to help strengthen the school system, and to build awareness in whole communities of the importance of girls’ education.
Indonesia - Enabling young people to create economic opportunities through entrepreneurship
Implementation Partner: Prestasi Junior Indonesia
Grant duration: 3 years
Projected impact: 33.000 people
This program will implement the Zurich Entrepreneurship Program with the aim to empower more than 9,000 high school and vocational high school students in Indonesia to be able to create 50 new businesses in the next three years.
This program will facilitate the comprehensive development of students' business skills through hands-on experience in starting and operating a micro-enterprise in their respective schools. Students’ participation in this program is expected to foster students' awareness of the potential of entrepreneurship to achieve financial well-being while building the entrepreneurial mindset and skills needed to create their own business in the future.
Singapore – Advancing vocational training for adults with special needs
Implementation partners: APSN and Zurich Singapore
Grant duration: 2 years
Impact ambition: 800
At the heart of this new grant is APSN, a social service agency that provides special education, vocational training and employment support services for individuals with mild intellectual disability. APSN Centre for Adults empowers their trainees through best practices in vocational training, realistic on-the-job training and support services until they are ready for the workforce.
Through this grant, Zurich Singapore will help provide skills, resources, and advocacy to support and expand APSN’s vocational training programmes, benefitting individuals with higher support needs and making a positive impact on their families.
Europe, Middle East, and Africa
Junior Achievement Africa - Creating bright, boundless futures for African youth
Implementation partner: Junior Achievement Africa
Grant duration: 3 years
Projected impact: 550,000 people
This partnership with JA Africa and JA Wolrldwide will empower young people across Africa to succeed as both innovative job creators and well-qualified job seekers. This collaboration will enable thousands of youth in nine countries to access programs that set them on the path to success, not just as individuals but as leaders who influence positive change within their communities.
Austria - Providing access to prevention, diagnosis and therapy for disadvantaged youth
Implementation partner: Verein T.I.W.
Grant duration: 5 years
Projected impact: 38,900 people
This program will increase health competence with young people as a success factor for workplace integration. With this grant, we are taking a stand for disadvantaged youth and their health care and health education needs. This local program will also support the establishment and operation of the “T.I.W. Gesundheitszentrum powered by Z Zurich Foundation” (T.I.W. Health Care Center) in Vienna, open to young people in these programs.
Through a previous three-year grant with Verein T.I.W, we worked with people facing limited prospects of finding employment.
France – Fighting against social determinism and promoting educational opportunities for youth
Implementation Partner: Télémaque
Grant duration: 3 years
Projected impact: 1,300 people
This program aims to fight social determinism and promote equal opportunities in education, in collaboration with Zurich Insurance PLC in France.
This grant aims to support more than 400 young people per year who have the desire to succeed but lack the keys and the means to achieve their ambitions. This program will help facilitate social success and access to employment, through courses, English coaching and help with professional integration.
It will also youth to build their self-confidence through an innovative personal development program, build social ties and sociocultural awareness through educational workshops and company visits, and connect them with Zurich France employees who will help them discover the world of work.
Ireland – Increasing education outcomes for disadvantaged young people
Implementation partners: University College Dublin (UCD) and Zurich Ireland
Grant duration: 4 years
Projected impact: 650 people
A four-year intervention program in Ireland, together with the University College Dublin (UCD) and Zurich Ireland to narrow the socio-economic gap on education outcomes for young people.
Designed by UCD, the ‘Power 2 Progress’ program seeks to foster educational resilience in the Irish educational system with a three-year intervention plan for senior cycle DEIS school students and by informing on educational policy for future students via an integrated four-year PhD. This program targets 4 tuition groups each at 15 schools with ten pupils per group. It aims to transform the lives of 600 pupils, and positively impact many more (such as the teacher participants, and those benefiting from the eventual policy reform this program seeks to influence).
Isle of Man – Helping young people navigate the job market through a career portal
Implementation partner: Junior Achievement
Grant duration: 3 years
Projected impact: 21,050 people
This grant is supporting a new career platform with Junior Achievement. Through this portal, young people will have access to relevant skills-building content in various mediums, 'youth friendly' job opportunities, and practical tools to build CVs, prepare and practice for interviews and gain direct exposure to employers.
In addition to this, and most importantly, we aim to empower young people by helping them to build confidence and self-esteem that will enable them to be successful in life.
Italy – Bridging the knowledge and skills gap between schools and the workplace
Implementation partners: Junior Achievement Italy, Zurich Italy
Grant duration: 3 years
Projected impact: 10,000 people
Youth unemployment is extremely high in Italy, especially in the south and one of the principal reasons for this is the large gap between what students are taught at high school and the skills needed by large businesses and firms.
In collaboration with JA Italy, we aim to create awareness of relevant topics with an engaging approach that allows students to develop specific skills for which we see an increasing demand in the professional world.
A new curriculum, focused on protection and prevention, has been added to the established educational entrepreneurship program, Ideas in Action. This program benefits students, teachers, and volunteers by fostering a positive social return on investment. The curriculum bridges the gap between school and workplace, encouraging students to devise entrepreneurial ideas related to 'protection and prevention'. It enhances soft skills and active citizenship skills, vital for understanding social and environmental issues, irrespective of students' future career choices.
Volunteers and teachers, termed 'Dream Coaches', receive thorough training in educational entrepreneurship. The program emphasizes empowering teachers with experiential learning practices for their teaching, promoting professional development and enhancing teacher-student relationships.
Slovakia – Motivating and supporting young women in pursuing STEM studies and careers
Implementation partner: Aj Ty v IT
Grant duration: 5 years
Projected impact: 32,600 people
This grant will empower young girls and teenagers to choose STEM as a career, in collaboration with Aj Ty v IT.
This grant will help Aj Ty v IT expand its program to regional cities in Slovakia to reach more girls at an early age, and to encourage teachers and other stakeholders to become involved. Our grant is intended to provide a support structure for female IT students at universities. We’re looking to develop more strategic tools to create a step change, including an educational roadmap, an awareness campaign and a network to support female students.
Spain - Addressing high youth unemployment by creating job opportunities
Implementation partner: Dual Vocational Training in Insurance (DVT)
Grant duration: 4 years
Projected impact: 1,200 people
Youth unemployment in Spain is at 39.5%. This grant focuses on educating and training young people and promoting positive mental wellbeing to improve their employability. It also emphasizes diversity and inclusion in the insurance sector.
After DVT students have completed training and apprenticeships, this program creates job opportunities within the companies where they did their apprenticeships.
Spain – Creating employment opportunities for young people excluded from the traditional school system
Implementation partner: El Lindar, Sabadell Spain
Grant duration: 3 years
Projected impact: 9,500 people
This grant aims to increase employability for young people in vulnerable circumstances. El Lindar is a second-chance school, providing guidance and support to teenagers and young people through personalized and real-life job training programs.
The diverse learning experiences help to guarantee that participants can build their own learning paths and develop their basic, technical and transversal competences to help them grow personally and professionally.
The Digital Manufacturing program accompanies students for three years: from ‘school dropout’ to a job placement in the industry.
Spain – Focusing on youth empowerment with a second learning chance for young students
Implementation partner: Junior Achievement
Grant duration: 4 years
Projected impact: 25,200 people
This grant will support young people starting their careers through a three-pillar initiative, in collaboration with Junior Achievement, and the Get Ready for Life program.Under the “Z-Shake” umbrella, our three local grants focus on youth empowerment by providing young people with the workshops, training and apprenticeships they need to fulfil their potential in life. Participants will have the chance to go even deeper by addressing the mental health issues that can come with unemployment. “Z-Shake” equips young people to be better prepared for the future and provides resources to deal with key risks such as stress and anxiety.
Switzerland – Supporting children in understanding and exercising their rights
Implementation partner: Ombuds Office for Children’s Rights Switzerland
Grant duration: 4 years
Projected impact: 40,600 people
Our grant will enable the Ombuds Office for Children's Rights Switzerland to offer a national service, covering all cantons, that helps children and those up to the age of 18 to better understand and exercise their rights in legal proceedings. The service will help people with accessing age-adapted legal information and offers mediation between them and courts, authorities, public or private institutions or organizations involved in the care of children and young people.
Turkey – Training women teachers as social entrepreneurs
Implementation partner: Türk Eğitim Derneği (Turkish Education Association).
Grant duration: 6 years
Projected impact: 141,500 people
A six-year program to support female teachers in the first year of their career, in collaboration with Türk Eğitim Derneği (Turkish Education Association).
“Our Teachers: Insurance of Education” is a program with the ambition of supporting 1,000 female teachers assigned to villages/small towns in the first year of their career by offering tailored personal and professional development plans.
The objective is to try to reduce the environmental, physical and professional challenges experienced by the teachers, to enhance their knowledge, and to improve the confidence and motivation of these people that play such a critical part in children’s education and future. In addition to teachers, this program will also directly impact more than 30,000 children, and indirectly impact 150,000 family members.
Latin America
Argentina - Helping young people prepare for the labor market through training and development
Implementation partner: Zurich Santander Seguros Argentina S.A and the Fundación Pléroma
Grant duration: 3 years
Projected impact: 1,600 people
A three-year grant to promote and enhance employment opportunities for those most in need, in collaboration with Zurich Santander Seguros Argentina S.A and the Fundación Pléroma. The Fundación Pléroma’s Empujar program is made up of a group of local companies that have come together with the mission of promoting and enhancing employment opportunities for young people from vulnerable social contexts.
Their collective aim is to strengthen cooperation between community groups that promote local development through the training and development of young people. The intended beneficiaries are students living in the vicinity of the headquarters of the supporting companies. Through the Empujar program, beneficiaries are matched with volunteering professionals.
Brazil – Empowering minorities through an apprenticeship program for personal and professional development
Implementation partner: Instituto Techmail
Grant duration: 3 years
Projected impact: 1,100 people
A three-year grant to promote the personal and professional development of minorities, in collaboration with Instituto Techmail.
Instituto Techmail’s apprenticeship program is helping young people with their social and personal development, equipping them with the kind of specific knowledge, skills and attitudes that can transform their lives and help them to fulfil their potential, in turn making them an agent for social transformation in their own communities. Our local grant program will fund four classes per year, with each class receiving 30 students from the identified minority groups.
Brazil – Empowering the Brazilian Amazonian communities
Implementation partner: IMAFLORA and Zurich Brazil
Grant duration: 3 years
Projected impact: 21,300 people
A three-year grant to support Amazon’s Indigenous communities with IMAFLORA and Zurich Brazil.
The COVID-19 pandemic has had a multiplying effect on the damage being done in many Indigenous communities already affected by the deforestation of the Amazon. Through the Origens Brasil® program, we aim to empower thousands of people and producers from the Indigenous communities and also provide local Zurich employees with tangible experience to understand the Amazon region and its people.
Chile - Providing employability and entrepreneurial pathways to vulnerable youth
Implementation partner: Comida para Todos (CPT)
Grant duration: 3 years
Projected impact: 3,600 people
This scalable program will provide vulnerable, unemployed youth with the specialized culinary skills and knowledge to create sustainable incomes.
Participants will first receive practical training in the 'Specialization center through thematic workshops. The next phase, the 'Accelerator lab' will focus on the individuals' skills and interests. Additionally, it will off mentoring and coaching to help participants obtain suitable work through employability or entrepreneurship
Ecuador - Facilitating high-quality education in vulnerable communities
Implementation partner: Fundacion Unidos por la Educacion
Grant duration: 3 years
Projected impact: 9,000 people
This grant aims to transform six educational institutions in a holistic, comprehensive way in order to empower them to be promoters of transformation and development in their communities.
This program will optimize existing infrastructure, provide teacher training and curriculum adaptation, and implement strategies for working with communities in socioeconomic development.
Latin America – Focusing on education and career opportunities for youth
Implementation partner: Foundation Forge, Zurich Santander Insurance America S.L
Grant duration: 3 years
Projected impact: 151,000 people
A three-year grant to help young Latin Americans prepare for the labor market. It is our first regional local grant in Latin America, in collaboration with several Zurich local offices, Zurich Santander Insurance America S.L and the Foundation Forge.
“Skills for the Future” is a program aiming to reduce the gap between the skills of young people from vulnerable communities and the labor market they will face. Through this program, we are hoping to support the personal and professional development of more than 84,000 young people across Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Mexico and Uruguay.
Latin America - Providing vulnerable communities training in sustainable development
Implementation partner: Responsible Tourism Insitute (ITR), Plan21
Grant duration: 3 years
Projected impact: 11,400 people
Behind each tourist destination, there are communities that have the potential to further develop their human and economic realities. This program will help small vulnerable communities in Latin America that are located near tourism hot spots, with the goal of enabling them to achieve sustainable economic growth that transforms these destinations.
Mexico - Empowering the next generation of female leaders in STEM
Implementation partner: United Nations Development Program (UNDP), Zurich Mexico
Grant duration: 3 years
Projected impact: 30,000 people
Together with the United Nations Development program in Mexico (UNDP) and with support from Zurich’s local team we have launched a new project to empower the next generation of female leaders in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). This collaboration aims to promote inclusion and equality by supporting the development of female students and entrepreneurs in Puebla, Veracruz, Yucatan, and Mexico City. Through the various initiatives, we are hoping to reach over 30,500 students, tutors and women entrepreneurs.
In today's rapidly changing world, it is vital to build awareness of inequality and increase economic opportunities for vulnerable youth. We support young people in building the skills, confidence and connections they need to develop their ideas into successful employment opportunities.
North America and Bermuda
Canada – Empowering the next generation to succeed through career and money management programs
Implementation partner: Junior Achievement
Grant duration: 5 years
Projected impact: 8,800 people
A five-year grant to help students build resilience and take control of their finances and career paths. with Junior Achievement.
Through this program, volunteers from Zurich Canada are inspiring students in grades seven to 12 by delivering Junior Achievement (JA) programs focused on money management, work-readiness and entrepreneurship. Working with approximately 200 Specialist High Skills Major (SHSM) students, Zurich employees will deliver four JA work-readiness programs over two school years. These students will take part in several programs and events that focus on critical thinking, communication, collaboration, career options and more. Students will also have the opportunity to win one of five post-secondary scholarships.
USA – Ensuring equitable opportunities for all young people in higher education and professional careers
Implementation partner: Year Up and Zurich North America
Grant duration: 3 years
Projected impact: 350 people
A three-year grant to equip young adults and empower them to reach their potential with Year Up and Zurich North America.
In the United States, Zurich employees directed our attention to Year-Up, a charity empowering young adults to move from minimum wage jobs to meaningful careers by helping them gain the skills, experiences, and support necessary to reach their full potential and thrive in higher education and professional careers. Our collaboration with Year-Up is helping ensure equitable opportunities for young people of color from all backgrounds. Zurich employees are also actively involved in volunteer and employer engagement and support. Together we want to support over 4,000 young people in need of an opportunity.