Commonwealth Youth Credit Initiative

Objectives

The main objective of the Commonwealth Youth Credit Initiative is the creation of employment opportunities for   unemployed young people through training and credit support. Therefore, there is increased access to and   opportunities through micro-credit for disadvantaged youth. Disadvantaged young women and men are trained in   financial and enterprise management and are approved for credit to establish successful businesses. Thus there   are increasing numbers of young people in gainful employment . The programme also increases the knowledge of   young people and youth-related organisations in the operation and management of credit programmes.
 The specific objectives are as follows:

• Identify potential young people, assess their credit needs and develop their credit management and entrepreneurial capabilities.
• Implement and evolve an effective credit delivery and monitoring system to support young people through credit.
• Achieve self-sustainability in terms of generating adequate funds for continuing the programme and also in terms of borrowers self-sustainability to lead them towards financial independence.
• Ultimately help these young borrowers to increase their creditworthiness and demonstrate business success to graduate from targeted small credit receivers to borrowers from formal financial institutions like banks.  

The Commonwealth Youth Credit Initiative (CYCI)  completed a three-year pilot cycle at Ahmedabad,  Gujarat, India in 1999. This was as mandated by the  Commonwealth Youth Ministers Meeting of 1995. The  pilot project was conducted in collaboration with the  International Centre for Entrepreneurship and Career  Development (ICECD). It became self-sustaining after  three years with operational self-sufficiency of 98  percent. Over 2,500 young people in India were  trained and provided with small loans.

Commonwealth Youth Credit Initiative (CYCI) Project Cycle