The New York-based Citi Foun­da­tion's Re­quest for Pro­pos­als (RFP) dead­line for its 2025 Glob­al In­no­va­tion Chal­lenge is fast ap­proach­ing.

The ini­tia­tive pro­vides phil­an­thropic sup­port for com­mu­ni­ty or­gan­i­sa­tions to pi­lot or scale so­lu­tions to so­cial and eco­nom­ic is­sues around the world.

The dead­line for el­i­gi­ble or­gan­i­sa­tions to reg­is­ter is 12 pm New York Time (East­ern Time) on March 4 and re­cip­i­ents will be an­nounced lat­er this year.

In a re­lease, the Citi Foun­da­tion said de­spite re­cent progress, young peo­ple glob­al­ly con­tin­ue to ex­pe­ri­ence chal­lenges in their pur­suit of em­ploy­ment.

It said ac­cord­ing to the In­ter­na­tion­al Labour Or­ga­ni­za­tion, 65 mil­lion young peo­ple glob­al­ly are un­em­ployed.

With its im­pend­ing RFP, it said 50 com­mu­ni­ty or­gan­i­sa­tions will re­ceive $500,000 each in grant sup­port for in­no­v­a­tive em­ploy­ment so­lu­tions for low-in­come youth, from up­skilling and reskilling ef­forts to en­tre­pre­neur­ship pro­gram­ming, fi­nan­cial ed­u­ca­tion and more.

"Ac­cess to job op­por­tu­ni­ties re­mains a chal­lenge for many young peo­ple. It is vi­tal­ly im­por­tant to pro­vide tools that al­low them to suc­cess­ful­ly in­te­grate in­to the work­force. Through this new chal­lenge, Citi Foun­da­tion reaf­firms our com­mit­ment to youth and to projects that gen­er­ate a re­al im­pact on em­ploy­a­bil­i­ty,” Citi Trinidad and To­ba­go CCO Mitchell De Sil­va said.

The re­lease said the 2025 Glob­al In­no­va­tion Chal­lenge builds on Citi and the Citi Foun­da­tion’s long-stand­ing in­vest­ment in youth, in­clud­ing over $300 mil­lion in the last decade to pro­grammes that sup­port­ed over one mil­lion young peo­ple in ex­pand­ing their skills, ex­pe­ri­ence and net­works through its Path­ways to Progress ini­tia­tive.

“From skills train­ing to job place­ment pro­gram­ming and more, Citi and the Citi Foun­da­tion have long in­vest­ed in scal­able so­lu­tions to ac­cel­er­ate youth em­ploy­a­bil­i­ty. But it re­mains a per­sis­tent and ur­gent mat­ter, and we know there is more work to be done,” said Ed Skyler, Citi Head of En­ter­prise Ser­vices & Pub­lic Af­fairs and chair of the Citi Foun­da­tion.

“Ap­ply­ing the Glob­al In­no­va­tion Chal­lenge mod­el to this is­sue rep­re­sents the next step in our fund­ing jour­ney and our con­tin­ued in­vest­ment in the young peo­ple poised to build thriv­ing and re­silient com­mu­ni­ties.”

For more in­for­ma­tion on this op­por­tu­ni­ty, in­clud­ing el­i­gi­bil­i­ty re­quire­ments and tar­get ge­o­gra­phies, or­gan­i­sa­tion can vis­it www.citi­foun­da­tion.com/rfp.