2025 Q3 Board Book (Staff)

The September 22–25, 2025 Board Meeting in Toronto, Canada, focused on delivering programmatic impact for young people and improving organizational agility and strengthening the Foundation's culture. The Foundation’s efforts continue to center on enabling dignified and fulfilling work for young people in Africa and Indigenous youth in Canada. This quarter emphasized accelerating progress toward 2025 goals, scaling proven programs, enhancing operational rigour, and deepening inclusion and gender intentionality following comprehensive performance reviews and baseline findings.

Key activities and initiatives during this quarter include:

1. Strategic Planning and Program Development: The Foundation is accelerating progress toward its 2025 goal of 17 million youth-in-work. The 2025 target is for women to represent 60% of youth-in-work participants. Programs continue to focus on key sectors: Agrifood Systems (50% of Youth-in-Work), Digital (17%), and Manufacturing (13%). Existing and pipeline programs are projected to enable 25.3 million youth-in-work by 2027. Country strategies are being refined based on evidence, such as in Uganda, where interventions are being reworked to focus on real income opportunities, support for young mothers in skilling programs, and using digital platforms and youth SACCOs to aid entrepreneurs. Significant approvals included the Accelerating Impact for Young Women in Africa (AIM 2.0) program, and the Agrifood Systems Transformation for Youth Employment (ASTYE) in Uganda.

2. Program Performance and Impact Measurement: As of July 2025, the Foundation has surpassed its 2025 goal, reaching 17.8 million youth-in-work. Additionally, 66.2 million people have participated in work-enabling activities. A comprehensive impact measurement approach is in place, including a multi-country baseline study (Ghana, Rwanda, Uganda, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Kenya, and Senegal) conducted between 2023 and 2024 to understand dignified and fulfilling work (DFW). The findings show that Foundation-supported youth are consistently outperforming the general population in accessing DFW. Currently, 78% of Foundation-supported youth are either accessing or progressing toward DFW, which is more than triple the national baseline of 22%. Notably, gender gaps remain significant, as young men are nearly twice as likely as young women to access dignified work, underscoring the need for stronger equity strategies targeting rural women and marginalized groups. Organizational agility improvements have reduced the program development turnaround time to an average of 220 days as of July 2025, down from 294 business days in Q3 2024, with a target of further reduction to 150 business days.

3. Organizational Agility and Operational Rigour: The Foundation is actively working to become more agile and strengthen its culture. Operational rigour and agility improvements have reduced the average program development turnaround time to 220 days as of July 2025, down from 294 business days in Q3 2024. The target is to further reduce this time to 150 business days. Key improvements include institutionalizing the tracking of inquiries ("waiting room") and acknowledging them within seven days on average. Furthermore, the initiative is focused on scaling impact with speed and quality by focusing on deepening programming, enhancing operational rigour, strengthening people capabilities, and sustaining culture.

4. Digital Transformation (Project Daraja): The Foundation has initiated Project Daraja (meaning "bridge" in Swahili), an enterprise-wide digital transformation initiative designed to enable a seamless, end-to-end (E2E) programming journey. This project aims to elevate the partner experience, accelerate turnaround times, scale programming activities, and leverage data as a strategic asset for decision-making. Key completed activities include establishing robust governance, leadership alignment on scope, and identifying priority initiatives for Phase 1, such as implementing the Ideas Tracking Platform ("The Waiting Room") and Fluxx 2.0 + CRM.

5. Advancing Influence for Impact and Thought Leadership: The Foundation is accelerating its influence agenda to shift policies, investments, and systems beyond its direct funding. This aims to advance access to dignified and fulfilling work as a global standard and position education as a driver of societal transformation. A unifying platform is proposed, including the reconvening of the Young Africa Works Summit bi-annually, timed with the Foundation's 20th anniversary, to serve as a flagship convening event. This platform will leverage evidence, voice, partnerships, and strategic convenings to shape priorities and drive collective action. Specific efforts in education include holding high-level dialogues, leveraging assets like the Education and Transition Docuseries, and publishing the second edition of the Secondary Education in Africa Report.

These activities highlight the Foundation’s commitment to enabling dignified and fulfilling work, scaling impact, deepening equity and inclusion, and driving system change through thought leadership.