Corruption and fraud misdirect public funds away from the people they are supposed to support. The reality is that the Sustainable Development Goals, which are a broadly recognized series of targets for governments and society to achieve by 2030, are unlikely to be attained without also achieving SDG Target 16.5 – to “substantially reduce corruption and bribery in all their forms”.

An important priority of the SDGs is youth employment, and in particular, decent jobs for youth, whereby young women and men have access to decent, productive work, everyone benefits, and our future is more prosperous. To achieve this, it is critical for young entrepreneurs, setting up their businesses for the first time, to get started on the right foot.

The purpose of this Toolkit is to contribute to this goal by encouraging young people starting their own businesses to operate with integrity from the outset. Our hope is that if young people starting new businesses do so correctly – by complementing their new ideas and commercial instincts with clear values, a strong code of ethics, and an embedded purpose to benefit society.