The Citi Foundation has partnered with Junior Achievement Worldwide (JA)–a partnership between the business community, educators and volunteers–for more than three decades to build young people's entrepreneurial skills through real-world business experience. In 2010 and 2011, we are investing in JA to build its capacity to hone young Africans' entrepreneurial skills through business experience. Specifically, the Citi Foundation's support is being directed toward the redesign of JA's Company Program, assisting JA in brokering relationships with microfinance organizations that will enable young people to go beyond just developing skills and actually accessing the resources needed to create a livelihood. Over the next five years, the modified program will be offered to 1.5 million marginalized in-school and out-of-school youth, providing them with training, skills and access to opportunities to get jobs or start their own businesses. With additional support from Citi volunteers, JA will also create and strengthen partnerships with organizations serving at risk young people across the continent.

In Brazil, the poor quality of the public school system combined with a lack of access to professional opportunities makes it exceedingly difficult for low-income young people to find work opportunities. Founded in 2004, with major support from the Citi Foundation, Instituto Profissionalizante Paulista (IPP) is a pre-employment center that combines basic academic and professional training with hands-on experience for low-income secondary school students living in Sao Paulo. The program prepares low-income youth for the job market and increases access to career opportunities, enabling them to generate income and become productive members of the community. This model aligns closely with the Brazilian government's policy to reduce unemployment by helping young people build skills to obtain their first job.

The Citi Foundation began supporting the American India Foundation's (AIF) Market Aligned Skills Training Program (MAST) in 2011. The program seeks to provide unemployed low-income youth, predominately from urban slum communities in India, with the training and support needed to access service-sector jobs. AIF has built strong partnerships with government, the private sector, and civil society and in collaboration with these institutions, developed MAST in 2008, which has, to-date, provided over 65,000 low-income youth with the knowledge and skills needed to enter the formal economy and secure gainful employment. It is estimated that 90% of India's youth will drop out of school before completing their secondary education. The majority of these young people will be limited to low paying job opportunities in the informal sector. At the same time, India's rapidly growing economy has resulted in an increased demand for skilled workers. However, the country's capacity to meet this demand lies at less than 30%. The MAST program seeks to address this gap by training unemployed youth for jobs in high growth service sector industries. Importantly, before a new program area is implemented, AIF conducts thorough market research into that community to determine the employment need and recruits and trains the target group to acquire the skills needed to fill those employment opportunities.