The Building Retail Career Skills Program supports young people from disadvantaged backgrounds, offering training, internships, and practical experiences at partner companies.
Junior Achievement (JA) Hungary is delighted to celebrate the Citi Foundation’s announcement that Junior Achievement has been selected as a grantee of its 2025 Global Innovation Challenge. As part of the challenge, 50 community organizations around the world will each receive $500,000 in grant support to advance innovative employment solutions for low-income youth, building on Citi and the Citi Foundation’s longstanding commitment to young people and their economic futures.
JA Hungary is one of a consortium of Junior Achievement partners in Europe lead by JA Romania that will work together to develop and pilot a range of employability supports. The grant will support a variety of programs, such as upskilling for digital literacy (including AI), technical and vocational training, work-based learning, career guidance and resources for entrepreneurs and mentorship, tailored to students in technical and vocational high-schools. These impactful solutions are designed to help young people adapt to rapidly changing economies and a job market that looks different than it has for generations before.
"The creativity, openness and adaptable skill development of Hungary's youth are truly shaping the future. These qualities empower them to transform the evolving, and often unpredictable, challenges of the labor market into significant opportunities,” Orsolya Gergely, CEO of Junior Achievement Hungary noted. “Programs like Building Retail Career Skills are vital in cultivating this immense potential, enabling our young people to step forward with confidence, agility and a competitive edge. We are grateful for the committed support of Citi Foundation and Citi in making these collective achievements possible."
“Hungarian youth are exceptionally talented and versatile, a quality we at Citi Hungary have come to deeply appreciate through our four decades of presence in Hungary and longstanding collaboration with JA Hungary,” said Munir Nanji, Central Europe Head for Citi. “We firmly believe the Building Retail Career Skills Program is pivotal as it not only imparts practical, market-ready skills for immediate employability but, crucially, also fosters highly transferable competencies that are foundational for sustained success across diverse and evolving sectors.”
The programs will be implemented over two years and recipients will have access to a learning community of fellow Global Innovation Challenge grantees that facilitates opportunities to build deeper connections, share lessons learned and exchange best practices.
For more information, including the complete list of grant recipients, please visit www.citifoundation.com/challenge and follow the impact these organizations are making at #InnovationChallenge on social media.