An overview of Futuremakers

What is Futuremakers?

Young people, especially girls and young women, often face barriers that limit their economic participation. As part of our commitment to accelerating inclusive and sustainable economic growth across our footprint, we have a responsibility to support this future workforce.

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

Launched in 2019 and delivered in partnership with the Standard Chartered Foundation, we support young people to learn new skills and improve their chances of getting a job or starting their business.

From 2019 to the end of 2023 these projects fell under one of three pathways: education, employability and entrepreneurship. Based on our learnings, we are refining our focus to create and sustain 140,000 jobs by 2030, through two pathways, employability and entrepreneurship.

We target a higher proportion of women, girls, and people with disabilities, in support of gender equity and disability inclusion.

**^{Futuremakers by numbers*}**

*From January 2019 to December 2023

43

_{^{markets with Futuremakers projects}}

223

_^projects

Reach

2,106,652 _{^{young people}}

68% _^female

68_^% _^female

Fundraising

_^USD 93.3 _^million

Our impact 2019 - 2023

We know that economic inclusion is a journey, and not something that can be achieved overnight. With this in mind, we developed the Futuremakers theory of change. This outlines how the three interlinked pathways: education, employability, and entrepreneurship, together bring new opportunities for young people to become more economically active.

Central to the theory of change are several stages and elements that together create impact. We define ‘impact’ as the long-term economic inclusion of young people.

Again, this is a long-term aim; there are important milestones where we measure results to mark progress towards these. The three key elements are:

Outputs

Improved
knowledge

Confidence

Intermediate outcomes

Setting up
a business

Being
employment ready

Outcomes

Completing
secondary
education

Creating
new jobs

Our impact 2019 - 2023

We have not captured these results for every young person reached by Futuremakers projects. Rather, outputs, intermediate outcomes, and outcomes are measured with participants in ‘intensive’ activities only.

2,106,652

young people reached by end December 2023

516,787

were participants in intensive activities

The definition of intensive varies across the three pathways, but generally means sustained participation in ongoing trainings, lessons, or mentorships. ‘Non-intensive’ refers to activities such as attendance to one-off webinars, seminars, etc.

Participants in intensive and non-intensive activities together combine to form our ‘reach’ figures across this report.

Defining economic inclusion

Via Futuremakers, we report progress towards greater economic inclusion across three aspects:

Targeted young people enter and remain in decent work.
Social barriers to young people’s participation in the economy are addressed.
Sustained growth of youth-led/female-led and inclusive micro enterprises.

Understanding this report

In this report, we explain the background of our Futuremakers strategy, and the different pathways that bring this global initiative to life. As well as an overview of the activities and results under each of the pathways, we provide a regional snapshot and success stories. We also review where aims and targets have not been met and explain how we’re learning from these.

Finally, we explain how our Theory of Change has evolved as a result of these learnings and insights.