Youth Opportunity (YO!) | 1 Economy Foundation

YO! is a youth-friendly meeting place where young people can become #BeFree innovators through shared conceptualization and design-thinking. It is intended to facilitate shared problem-solving of the challenges faced by local communities, grassroots entrepreneurs and SMEs.

With a focus on sustainable and innovative technology and enterprise, YO! provides young people with the opportunity to future-proof their communities through the next industrial Revolution. As a program, YO! partners with existing stakeholders to strengthen and increase accessibility to vocational skills training in an effort to enhance skills development and address unemployment.

The One Nation Fund Microfinance and Entrepreneurial Training Programme (ONF) was launched February 2018 and takes an economic development approach by providing second economy grassroots and micro-entrepreneur with access to collateral-free business loans (capital), confidence, and capacity building opportunities—all of which are needed to flourish in the first economy.

ONF is established as a zero-return rolling fund, which expects the beneficiaries to repay their loans to allow us to lend to other micro-entrepreneurs.

Our focus is on high potential micro-entrepreneurs who are unable to access finance through the financial system, thus this fund gives them a second chance. A vital matrix for the fund is social returns, which are at the heart of why the fund was created.

To date, the program has rolled out five (5) microfinance cycles and issued loans to 46 entrepreneurs, this investment is valued at 2.4 million.

2.4M