It is launched to find the most effective way to reach the largest number of young people with entrepreneurship education, social enterprise development services and project planning skills – only with these capacities will self-reliant action take place among youth. The institutions with the most investment in educating youth are youth-serving such as colleges/universities/technical institutions and therefore the challenge is to inspire them to take creative and innovative action to set up these Generators on their campuses. These would serve their students as well as other youth and would train and license other organizations to serve the youth in their community, thus multiplying the reach and accelerating the pace of change on the ground.

Consider this:

70% of the total population is under the age of 29.

Enormous talent, intelligence and positive energy are being wasted as these young people are being left behind.

Millions of young people are growing up without any hope and desire in life and are falling into disaster’s way.

There are no pro-active programs or policies for the mainstreaming of youth into the development process of Pakistan

Our Opportunity

We have a huge opportunity to work in partnership with universities to set up the Generators. These Generators will be housed in universities and will provide education and entrepreneurship training to students. They will also initiate an entrepreneurship education and enterprise development program.

Millennium Development Goals(MDGs)

In addition, we have the opportunity to engage young people as entrepreneurs who can help fulfill the MDGs of their countries and build a society that can live within its planetary boundaries. Developing countries lack basic infrastructure to provide people with adequate energy, sanitation, water, food, healthcare, education, and housing. It is urgent that effective solutions to these challenges are designed and implemented by setting up programs to teach entrepreneurship to a large cohort of young people, creating livelihoods that are sustainable and that have minimal impact on the environment. While pioneering technologies and market based private-sector solutions exist to resolve many of these problems, we cannot wait 30 years for successful models to spread organically. YES is accelerating a global response to this urgent need to generate enterprise solutions to these problems.

There are now a millions of young people in Pakistan who seek productive livelihoods, and are searching for their place in society. Disengaged and frustrated, young people can be exploited and represent a serious threat to peace and security. Meaningfully engaged, they become a source of creativity, strength and unity. However, jobs in the private and public sectors are not growing fast enough to keep pace with the growing youth populations. It is therefore essential that we support local efforts to create youth-centred/led enterprises and opportunities for self-employment opportunities especially at the base of the pyramid.

(Why is this critical right now?) It is critical right now for the YES team to focus our energy on what needs to be done to build the foundation for robust youth entrepreneurship ecology in Pakistan. Piecemeal efforts, though worthy, will not bring about quantum change. Plus the achievements, momentum, energy and excitement generated by the YES network over the past eight years have positioned us as an international leader in the area of youth-led development. We are at a watershed moment.

It is for this reason that we are working to set up the Generators to support our partners with our unique strength which is to provide what is missing by strengthening what is there – and not reinventing the wheel.

The YES team will launch a number of initiatives in the youth-serving institution under Enterprise Generator, including

Project Implementation Phases

Starting Youth Enterprise Generator Project: It is open to all youth-serving educational/technical institutions of Pakistan. Applications to join the project can be sent to: The Coordinator, Youth Social Entrepreneurship Program, YES Network Pakistan at contact@yesnetworkpakistan.org and yesnetworkpakistan@gmail.com with the subject “Youth Enterprise Generator Project”. For more information please call 92-423-7401517-18 or visit our website: www.yesnetworkpakistan.org