YouthBank was a small business incubation program for street youth. The project was born as a collaboration between students at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, USA, and youth leaders and nonprofits in Lagos, Nigeria.

From 2007-2009, from both sides of the Atlantic, they worked to launch a pilot YouthBank site in the Surulere district of Lagos, the world's fastest-growing megacity. When the program began in August 2009, over 50 homeless, unemployed, and at-risk youth from seven peer NGOs clamored to be part of YouthBank's pilot class of Fellows. The Fellows learned business skills on the job, running a photo studio in Surulere. At the end of a six-month employment period, they were ready to transition from employment to entrepreneurship and pitched their own business ideas to a panel of Nigerian CEOs.

The pilot project ended in May 2010. It taught us important lessons about creating employment in slum communities and managing an international, all-youth, all-volunteer team. Most importantly, it inspired a group of us YouthBankers to build a new organization focused on integrating so-called "unemployable" street youth into their local economies as entrepreneurs, employers, and community leaders.

Learn more about this new organization: