Future skills. Our commitment to young people in our communities.

Through Future Skills, we want to give young people the opportunity to reach their full potential as adults. By supporting access to education and training, we are committed to ensuring that the success of young people is not dictated by their socio-economic status or that of their family.

Our Future Skills work supports programs that close the education-to-employment gap.

The Future Skills theme is a natural evolution of our longstanding commitment to education in the communities where we live and work. It is also a direct response to the challenges and concerns faced by young people in a fast-changing world.

We believe that future skills will change over time, even during the course of one's career due to the pace of technology and globalization. Thus, we prioritize the education and skills that enable young people to be a life-long learners and imbue them with an ability to exercise agency. A key initial indication of success will be their attainment of entry-level employment commensurate with their talents and goals and informed by the demands of employers or self-employment through their own entrepreneurial initiative.

We support NGOs and organizations (i.e. schools, networks, institutions) which:

provide direct support to young disadvantaged people to facilitate access to education and skills essential to succeed
support and strengthen the education system and the structures and professionals within this system to be more effective and impactful and respond to specific needs and challenges facing young disadvantaged people
support a comprehensive approach to address external barriers effecting specific sub-sets of disadvantaged young people to access education and/or employment.

Global key figures 2021

74 Future Skills partner organizations

82 Future Skills programs funded benefiting more than 44 000 young people

More than 1 800 young people enrolled in a Credit Suisse-funded Future Skills program received support from Credit Suisse volunteers in a skills-based capacity (including mentoring/coaching and capacity building)

Over 8 900 hours of skills-based and hands-on volunteering invested to support Future Skills partner organizations

Informing Future Skills Investments

The Future Skills – APAC landscape mapping, commissioned by Credit Suisse Corporate Citizenship APAC in May 2019, presents some interesting information which include:

There are more than 750 million young women and men aged 15 to 24 years in Asia Pacific, accounting for over 60% of the world’s youth.
The youth unemployment rate in APAC is approximately 10.5%, more than double the unemployment rate of the total working age population.
Poor quality vocational education and lack of decent work prospects mean that youth face both poor educational outcomes and vulnerable employment conditions.
There is strong and growing donor interest in Future Skills in the region with a number of private and corporate philanthropists identifying youth employment and skills as a priority area.

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Corporate Citizenship. Empowering People.

Together with our employees we work with selected partner organizations to help strengthen our society and to address social issues. Together, we strive to build a more inclusive future where all people can access the resources and develop the financial, entrepreneurial and other skills to thrive in the economy and society. As part of this commitment we set three focus themes: Financial Inclusion, Financial Education and Future Skills.