Zukunftsträger Initiative

The Zukun­ft­sträger ini­tia­tive sup­ports dis­ad­van­taged young peo­ple in Ger­many on their path to a career. To this end, it funds and enables local stake­hold­ers who build strong alliances of schools, com­pa­nies, gov­ern­ment agen­cies and civ­il soci­ety orga­ni­za­tions in their regions. These alliances work close­ly togeth­er and coor­di­nate their ser­vices to increase young peo­ple’s chances of suc­cess­ful­ly enter­ing appren­tice­ships and employment.

Why is this pro­gram needed?

Near­ly three mil­lion young adults between the ages of 20 and 34 in Ger­many lack for­mal voca­tion­al qual­i­fi­ca­tions. In 2024, around 31,000 young peo­ple were unable to find a train­ing posi­tion. One rea­son is a lack of ori­en­ta­tion in the cos­mos of school-to-work tran­si­tion. Sup­port ser­vices are often iso­lat­ed and there is too lit­tle coop­er­a­tion between those involved in the tran­si­tion – schools, com­pa­nies, admin­is­tra­tion and civ­il soci­ety. At the same time, the short­age of skilled work­ers is becom­ing increas­ing­ly acute and appren­tice­ships remain vacant. 

Our response to this chal­lenge is the Col­lec­tive Impact approach: An anchor orga­ni­za­tion coor­di­nates coop­er­a­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tion between the play­ers in the cos­mos across sec­tor bound­aries and keeps them in orbit through reg­u­lar exchange.

The play­ers bun­dle and inter­link exist­ing offers, make them more vis­i­ble and joint­ly devel­op fur­ther sup­port options for and with young peo­ple. This might include career ori­en­ta­tion pro­grams with local busi­ness­es, qual­i­fi­ca­tion sup­port, train­ing men­tors, or one-on-one men­tor­ing for dis­ad­van­taged students.

PHI­NEO sup­ports the anchor orga­ni­za­tions in set­ting up and mon­i­tor­ing the region­al alliances – offer­ing advice on impact ori­en­ta­tion, net­work build­ing, fundrais­ing, mon­i­tor­ing, and eval­u­a­tion. PHI­NEO also curates prac­ti­cal tools and best prac­tices and for­mu­lates rec­om­men­da­tions for action. Com­mu­ni­ca­tions around the ini­tia­tive raise aware­ness of the poten­tial of Col­lec­tive Impact in the school-to-work transition. 

As soon as the play­ers work togeth­er and share their exper­tise, every­one ben­e­fits: the state, the econ­o­my and espe­cial­ly the young peo­ple them­selves. Thanks to suit­able indi­vid­ual sup­port and clear struc­tures, they find their way through the cos­mos of tran­si­tion. Empow­ered and self-deter­mined, they improve their own prospects. The acute short­age of jobs and skilled work­ers is addressed at the same time.

Stu­dent, aged 19

I know what appren­tice­ship I want to do. I just need sup­port to get there. At the employ­ment agency, for exam­ple, I’m always offered some­thing that I’m not real­ly inter­est­ed in.


Who is imple­ment­ing the ini­tia­tive locally? 

The Zukun­ft­sträger ini­tia­tive sup­ports five civ­il soci­ety orga­ni­za­tions build­ing and coor­di­nat­ing local net­works in Munich, Rhine-Neckar, Leipzig, Biele­feld, and Frank­furt.


Zukun­ft­sträger Net­work Leipzig
At the cen­ter of the Leipzig net­work is HEIZHAUS gGmbH, which works close­ly with a region­al alliance of com­mit­ted stake­hold­ers – espe­cial­ly in the Grü­nau dis­trict. In some neigh­bor­hoods, near­ly one in four young peo­ple leave school with­out a diplo­ma. A per­ma­nent point of con­tact and con­crete ser­vices in open youth work cre­ate new per­spec­tives for these young peo­ple. Vis­it the Web­site here (ger­man): Zukun­ft­sträger Leipzig
Zukun­ft­sträger Net­work Rhine-Neckar
In the Rhine-Neckar met­ro­pol­i­tan region, the ini­tia­tive part­ners with EDU­CA­TION Y e.V., an expe­ri­enced and well-con­nect­ed orga­ni­za­tion. The net­work places par­tic­u­lar empha­sis on work­ing with teach­ers at Realschulen plus in Lud­wigshafen. The goal: to pro­vide young peo­ple with the best pos­si­ble sup­port through ser­vices that pro­mote skills devel­op­ment, per­son­al growth, and accom­pa­ni­ment dur­ing train­ing. Vis­it the Web­site here (ger­man): Zukun­ft­sträger Metropol­re­gion Rhein-Neckar
Zukun­ft­sträger Net­work Munich
From 2020 to 2023, START­STARK GmbH laid the ground­work for the Munich net­work. Work­ing with a wide range of part­ners, the orga­ni­za­tion sup­port­ed young peo­ple in nav­i­gat­ing their social envi­ron­ment to find a sus­tain­able and suit­able career path. The focus was on stu­dents in grades 7 – 9, first- and sec­ond-year trainees, and so-called ​“hard-to-reach” young adults up to age 25.

Since Jan­u­ary 2024, Con­drobs e.V. has tak­en over as anchor orga­ni­za­tion, strength­en­ing the social and pro­fes­sion­al skills of dis­ad­van­taged young peo­ple through ser­vices at its GATE6 facil­i­ty in Munich’s MesseCity district.
Zukun­ft­sträger Net­work Bielefeld
Since Jan­u­ary 2025, REGE mbH has served as the anchor orga­ni­za­tion in Biele­feld. The goal is to sup­port young peo­ple fac­ing par­tic­u­lar chal­lenges in tran­si­tion­ing from school to work. As a munic­i­pal orga­ni­za­tion, REGE runs the city’s youth employ­ment ser­vices and is part of the local Youth Employ­ment Agency. It has coor­di­nat­ed suc­cess­ful pro­grams such as the ​“Bie­le­fel­der Aus­bil­dungs­of­fen­si­ve” (“Biele­feld Train­ing Cam­paign”), the ​“Bie­le­fel­der Aus­bil­dungs­gip­fel” (“Biele­feld Train­ing Sum­mit”) and ​“Nacht der Berufe” (“Night of the Pro­fes­sions”).

REGE also hosts the munic­i­pal coor­di­na­tion office for the North Rhine-West­phalia state pro­gram ​“Kein Abschluss ohne Anschluss” (“No grad­u­a­tion with­out fol­low-up”), which plays a key role in sup­port­ing all stu­dents in their career paths.
Zukun­ft­sträger Net­work Frankfurt

Since Jan­u­ary 2025, the Gesell­schaft für Jugend­be­schäf­ti­gung e.V. (GJB e.V.) has served as the anchor orga­ni­za­tion in Frank­furt. Build­ing on exist­ing cross-sec­toral struc­tures in the school-to-work tran­si­tion, the focus is on pre­vent­ing dropout from train­ing. The aim is to strength­en col­lab­o­ra­tion between pub­lic, pri­vate, and civ­il soci­ety actors to sup­port young peo­ple sus­tain­ably on their path into work. 

The start­ing point for the Frank­furt net­work is the ​“Netz­werk Aus­bil­dung und Arbeit” (“ Train­ing and Employ­ment Net­work”), a strate­gic forum host­ed by the ​“Dezer­nat für Bil­dung, Immo­bi­li­en und Neu­es Bau­en” (“Depart­ment for Edu­ca­tion, Real Estate, and Urban Devel­op­ment”). Until now, the forum has main­ly served infor­ma­tion exchange. Its mis­sion: to show fam­i­lies that suc­cess­ful career paths don’t only fol­low aca­d­e­m­ic routes – dual voca­tion­al train­ing is an equal­ly valu­able and reward­ing option. Under the Zukun­ft­sträger ini­tia­tive, the net­work will evolve into a plat­form for joint devel­op­ment, deci­sion-mak­ing, and implementation.

What is cur­rent­ly happening?

In the sec­ond fund­ing phase (since July 2023), the Zukun­ft­sträger team – togeth­er with an Advi­so­ry Group – has ana­lyzed where cross-sec­toral net­works can be built par­tic­u­lar­ly well and what con­di­tions enable ser­vice struc­tures to emerge or be linked. In ear­ly 2025, the ini­tia­tive expand­ed to include new net­works in Frank­furt and Biele­feld. The exist­ing net­works are now being active­ly sup­port­ed and fur­ther developed. 

PHI­NEO sup­ports the estab­lish­ment of sus­tain­able struc­tures that remain in place even after the end of the fund­ing peri­od. This is why we facil­i­tate an exten­sive exchange of expe­ri­ence and inten­sive sup­port for the fund­ed net­works. It enables us to learn even more about how local col­lab­o­ra­tives work best, how exact­ly they work and how spon­sors can best sup­port them. We would like to make this knowl­edge freely avail­able and thus pro­mote the Col­lec­tive Impact approach in Ger­many. Click here for the free online course ​“Col­lec­tive Impact” (cur­rent­ly only in German).

Who sup­ports Zukunftsträger?

The non­prof­it analy­sis and con­sult­ing com­pa­ny PHI­NEO launched the Zukun­ft­sträger Ini­tia­tive togeth­er with the JPMor­gan­Chase Foun­da­tion as part of its ​“New Skills at Work Initiative”.

Dura­tion: 2019 — 2026

Fund­ed by:

Would you also like to become a ​“Zukunfts­trä­ger”?

As a foun­da­tion, com­pa­ny, indi­vid­ual or actor in the pub­lic sec­tor, you can also par­tic­i­pate as a spon­sor. The pre­req­ui­site for this is that you would like to con­tribute a larg­er sum and/​or your exper­tise for a project dura­tion of three to four years. The more spon­sors we have, the more effec­tive­ly we can sup­port young peo­ple in dif­fer­ent regions! 

Your con­tact is Kat­ri­na Zuchina.