The MasterCard Foundation - Support Entrepreneurs

| CONTACT US | SITE MAP | NEWSROOM

	Enable Continued Learning
	Facilitate Connections to Markets
	Support Entrepreneurs
	Where We Work

Many young people will have to create their own jobs. Youth entrepreneurship provides an important way to integrate youth into the workforce when complemented by a broader strategy to prepare youth to enter the market. Young people face more challenges compared to adults in starting and developing successful businesses, including: lack of financial services, limited business contacts, and virtually no access to advisory services. However, young entrepreneurs have demonstrated that they are innovative and responsive to new economic opportunities and trends in their communities as well as growth sectors of the market.

Our program seeks to enable young entrepreneurs to succeed by expanding their access to knowledge, skills, networks and financial resources by:

Expanding access to financial services
Providing business mentors, networks and assistance services
Mainstreaming entrepreneurship learning

		"The project will help support us and our families by giving us business knowledge. We will learn how to do market studies, how to choose a store location and how to assess whether our business idea will be successful or not. I could not afford to go to a formal school, and there is little opportunity for me to learn this in other ways, so this will be very valuable, for me and my family." Merye, age 24, Morocco, is seeking business skills to expand her small clothing and cosmetic trading company.