Bridging the resource gap between Asian youth leaders and the public, private and social sectors.
- The Youth Opportunities Platform created by AVPN, with founding support from the Citi Foundation, will unlock and mobilise resources towards youth priorities in Asia
- Based on a 2022 AVPN study of 2,000 youths (aged 18-35 years) across 5 emerging Southeast Asian countries (Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam), ‘education’, ‘personal empowerment’, and ‘doing social good’ are youth’s top 3 priorities
- While there are numerous initiatives already supporting young people, access to opportunities and connections are still considered critical gaps to achieving these priorities
- With over 60% of the world’s youth living in Asia-Pacific, supporting initiatives and opportunities must be delivered at scale
- This will be the first platform of its kind in Asia that aggregates capital resources in the public, private, and social sectors, and matches them – at scale – to youth solutionists in the region.
With founding support from the Citi Foundation, AVPN launches the Youth Opportunities Platform at the AVPN Global Conference, the largest in-person social investing conference in Asia. The first-of-its-kind Youth Opportunities Platform aggregates capital and matches these resources to opportunities and initiatives that empower youth.
At the centre of the Platform are youth solutionists, or young impact leaders, who are driving the youth advocacy movement. They are supported by public, private and social sector practitioners, who see the importance of putting young people at the centre of impactful decision-making.
In Indonesia, there are two organizations that are anchor partners for this Platform from the country. One of these organizations is the foundation of a startup that is already at the unicorn level. The development of startups in Indonesia is quite fast. According to the latest data from Startup Ranking in 2022, there are 2,384 startups in the country.
This number puts Indonesia as the sixth largest in the world. In addition to increasingly sophisticated technological factors, another factor that influences the rapid development of startups is the large number of Indonesians, which is a good opportunity to do various businesses, especially if you understand what is being wanted and needed in the market, particularly young people.
Entrepreneurs, investors and the government who support each other also create positive energy for the growth of startups in Indonesia. The majority of startup founders in Indonesia are young people ranging from 25 to 38 years old, which makes Indonesia a key market for this regional platform.
Ecosystem-level challenges impeding youth empowerment at scale
The Platform rose out of the realisation that, with over 60% of the world’s young people living in Asia-Pacific, access to opportunities and connections are becoming critical gaps in meeting youth priorities. While many stakeholders across the public, private, and social sectors are investing in initiatives that support youth development, they often operate in silos within a fragmented ecosystem that fails to include young people in decision-making.
Seasoned supporters of youth, such as the Citi Foundation, which has invested more than USD275 million to address youth unemployment, know that young people must ultimately be the solutionists in solving the challenges that most impact their generation and their future.
