About

Youth unemployment rates are at a global crisis level with many nations having their youngest workers two to four times as unlikely to find jobs as the general population. Unable to get a foothold in any career, many young people have become part of a "lost generation." Internships have become a critical tool for youth employment and career development. Unfortunately many internships are unpaid and often companies do not have the resources to sponsor them. While some youth can afford to take unpaid internships, many cannot and resort to taking menial jobs that pay or remain unemployed. These events collectively handicap millions of youths globally forcing them into a vicious cycle of unemployment and underemployment. By creating a platform to help broker matches between vetted local companies and recent graduates and fund those opportunities through donations from the general public we hope to give young people everywhere a second chance to start the careers of their dreams. The model of subsidizing internships has been proven to be successful at a small scale in the US, particularly with colleges functioning as the 3rd party funding. We hope to enhance and scale the idea globally through crowdfunding and the development of our platform. There are three main stakeholders in our model: (1) Donors (2) Host Companies (3) Prospective Interns (1) Donors: These can be any individuals in the world who select an area of the world to benefit and/or the career track in which they'd like to help fund an internship. Money donated through Sprout will be used to directly pay interns (2) Host Companies: Sprout will maintain a vetted list of companies willing to host interns. They will be able to rank select which candidates they would most like to host. (3) Prospective Interns: interns will be able to filter search companies that might be a good internship host for them through proximity and industry/role relevance. Mutual selection between prospective interns and host companies would result in a match. Strong accountability controls will be enforced to ensure donors have transparency into how their donations are spent and sponsored youth are benefited, host companies can be sure that they are getting interns which are a good fit for them and strong potential hires, and interns are aware of the opportunities available to them.

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