Capgemini & UNICEF: AI-Powered Green Careers for Youth Empowerment

A young woman named Elena lived in a small community near the Amazon rainforest in Brazil.

Her village, once vibrant, now bore the scars of deforestation and shifting weather patterns, a stark reminder of the climate crisis.

Elena, bright and eager, dreamed of a future that honored her home and protected its natural beauty.

She yearned for a green career, perhaps in sustainable agriculture or ecological restoration.

But where did one even begin?

The internet was a distant luxury, and local resources offered little guidance beyond traditional paths.

The world talked about a sustainable future, but for Elena, the bridge to that future felt invisible, guarded by a lack of information, opportunities, and tailored guidance.

Her ambition was clear, but the path, shrouded in uncertainty, remained elusive.

This feeling of being disconnected from the very opportunities that could fulfill her aspirations resonated with millions of young people globally.

In short: Capgemini and UNICEF have partnered, with Capgemini developing an agentic AI career assistant to help young people (age 16-24) in Brazil, especially in vulnerable areas, discover green learning and sustainable career opportunities, bridging the green skills gap and empowering youth globally.

Why This Matters Now: The Global Imperative of Green Careers

Elenas quiet struggle is far from unique.

Across the globe, young people, those in the 16-24 age group, not only feel the urgency of the climate crisis but also yearn to be part of the solution (Niraj Parihar, Capgemini, 2025).

This desire translates into a tangible interest in green jobs; over half of young people worldwide express this interest.

Yet, a significant chasm exists between aspiration and capability: only 44 percent feel they possess the necessary skills for these roles (Capgemini Research Institute and UNICEF’s Generation Unlimited).

This green skills gap represents a critical challenge, one that threatens both individual livelihoods and the collective pursuit of a sustainable future.

The urgency is amplified by the rapid evolution of the workforce itself.

Artificial Intelligence is fundamentally reshaping the world of work, with nearly 40 percent of core skills projected to change by 2030 (Nadi Albino, UNICEF’s Generation Unlimited, 2025).

This rapid evolution necessitates innovative solutions to equip the next generation.

It calls for tools that can not only provide career guidance but also actively connect youth to emerging economic opportunities, particularly within the burgeoning green economy.

This is where the global partnership between Capgemini and UNICEF steps in.

Launched in 2023, this multi-year collaboration aims to empower youth through education, skills development, and support for climate action (Capgemini, 2025).

Their latest endeavor, an AI-powered career assistant, represents a tangible step toward bridging these global divides and ensuring that young people like Elena can transform their aspirations into action.

The Global Challenge: Youth Aspirations and the Green Skills Gap

The statistics lay bare the global challenge: a passionate generation ready to tackle climate action, yet often lacking the clear pathways to do so.

Over half of young people globally are interested in green jobs, a powerful testament to their commitment to a sustainable future (Capgemini Research Institute and UNICEF’s Generation Unlimited).

However, the reality of skill readiness paints a different picture, with only 44 percent of these young individuals feeling adequately equipped for such roles (Capgemini Research Institute and UNICEF’s Generation Unlimited).

This 10 percent gap is more than just a number; it represents missed opportunities, untapped potential, and a bottleneck in our collective climate efforts.

This skills gap is not uniform.

It is often more pronounced in vulnerable areas and regions disproportionately affected by climate change, where access to education, training, and career guidance is already limited.

This is where the impact of targeted intervention becomes critical.

The problem is not a lack of will, but a lack of accessible, personalized pathways.

How do you guide a young person in a remote Brazilian community towards a green job opportunity that is truly relevant to their local context and skill set, when traditional career counseling might be scarce?

The answer lies in leveraging advanced technology to democratize access to information and opportunity.

A Brazilian Reality Check

Consider the specific challenges faced by young people in Brazil, particularly in vulnerable areas.

The rich biodiversity of the Amazon, while offering immense potential for green careers, also presents a complex landscape of environmental degradation and socio-economic disparities.

A young person here might have a deep understanding of local ecosystems, a natural affinity for agricultural practices, or a keen interest in renewable energy.

Yet, without clear guidance, without a bridge between their innate talents and formal green learning opportunities or job listings, their potential remains dormant.

The traditional models of career counseling, often centralized and resource-intensive, simply cannot reach this scale, particularly in remote or underserved regions.

This is precisely the vacuum the Capgemini and UNICEF partnership seeks to fill.

Introducing the Green Career Assistant: Personalized AI Guidance

To address this complex challenge, Capgemini and UNICEF have pioneered an innovative solution: an AI-powered career assistant.

This tool, developed through Capgeminis Global Data Science Challenge (GDSC) and unveiled on December 2, 2025, leverages a new multi-agentic AI system to deliver personalized, round-the-clock career guidance (Capgemini, 2025).

Its initial focus is on young people (aged 16-24) in Brazil, including those in vulnerable areas and regions particularly affected by climate change (Capgemini, 2025).

The solution is a testament to what is possible at the intersection of Artificial Intelligence, youth employability, and empowerment.

Acting as a digital career companion, the Green Career Assistant employs conversational interviews to understand a young persons unique skills, interests, and aspirations.

It then intelligently matches them to relevant green jobs, identifies specific skill gaps, and recommends locally relevant training options (Capgemini, 2025).

This personalized approach is crucial, moving beyond generic advice to offer tailored pathways.

The solutions strength lies in its sophisticated technical architecture: it combines the natural dialogue capabilities of generative AI with the structured logic of knowledge graphs.

This ensures not only engaging conversations but also reliable information and verifiable decision-making, with transparency regarding its recommendations (Capgemini, 2025).

Early evaluation results using AI-simulated personas show a near 80 percent success rate in matching users to relevant green job and training paths, alongside strong user experience ratings (Capgemini, 2025).

This high success rate offers a glimpse into the transformative potential of such a tool.

Powering Innovation: Capgeminis Global Data Science Challenge

The genesis of this groundbreaking AI career assistant lies within Capgemini’s annual Global Data Science Challenge (GDSC).

This company-wide initiative, open to all employees globally, empowers participants to apply their data and AI expertise to help solve critical global challenges (Capgemini, 2025).

The GDSC 2025 mobilized nearly 1,500 people across 40 countries (Capgemini, 2025), transforming internal talent into a powerful engine for corporate social responsibility and innovative solutions.

The winning team, hailing from Germany, developed the Green Career Assistant, showcasing the global collaborative spirit inherent in addressing climate action and youth employability.

This employee-led innovation is further bolstered by strategic technology partnerships.

AWS, a long-standing partner across nine years of GDSC competitions, provided its leading cloud-based AI infrastructure, supporting the deployment and orchestration of the AI agents that power the solution.

Mistral AI, a leader in innovative AI model development, contributed the AI models and tools used in the challenge (Capgemini, 2025).

This synergy between internal talent, strategic partnerships, and a focused challenge demonstrates how organizations can harness cutting-edge technology for meaningful social impact.

Crucially, the winning solution will be made available under an open-source license, ensuring broader adoption and impact beyond its initial deployment (Capgemini, 2025).

This commitment to open-source furthers the democratizing potential of the tool.

A Collaborative Vision for a Sustainable Future

The partnership between Capgemini and UNICEF extends beyond this single tool, embodying a larger collaborative vision for a sustainable future.

UNICEF’s Generation Unlimited, launched by the UN Secretary-General in 2018, is a global Public-Private-Youth Partnership with the ambitious mission to skill and connect 1.8 billion young people worldwide to opportunities for employment, entrepreneurship, and social impact (Capgemini, 2025).

This vast endeavor brings together global organizations, leaders, and young people to co-create and deliver innovative solutions on a global scale.

Niraj Parihar, CEO of Insights and Data Global Business Line and a member of Capgeminis Group Executive Committee, articulates this vision clearly: Young people around the world not only feel the urgency of the climate crisis but also want to be part of the solution (Niraj Parihar, Capgemini, 2025).

He emphasizes that the multi-agentic AI tool, combined with the partnership with UNICEF, is enabling young people to explore green career paths tailored for their personal context and ambitions.

Parihar reiterates Capgeminis commitment: At Capgemini, we are committed to creating real impact by equipping our employees with intelligent data and AI tools and opportunities to solve real-world problems.

This challenge is a concrete example of how AI and human collaboration can be an agent of positive change for the people, society and the planet (Niraj Parihar, Capgemini, 2025).

The ethical considerations are also at the forefront.

Nadi Albino, Deputy Director of UNICEFs Generation Unlimited, firmly states that Every young person deserves a dignified livelihood (Nadi Albino, Capgemini, 2025).

This core principle guides the development of such tools.

Albino further highlights the profound impact of AI on the workforce, noting that AI reshapes work changing nearly 40 percent of core skills by 2030.

In this context, personalized upskilling tools like an AI career assistant can help bridge global divides and connect youth to green economy opportunities (Nadi Albino, Capgemini, 2025).

This blend of technological innovation with a strong ethical foundation is crucial for ensuring that AI serves as a force for good.

Your Playbook: Empowering Youth for Green Careers

Prioritize Personalized Guidance: Recognize that one-size-fits-all career advice is insufficient.
Invest in tools and approaches that conduct conversational interviews to understand individual skills, interests, and aspirations, then provide tailored matches to jobs and training.
Build Content for AI Engagement: For organizations developing similar tools, ensure data sets include validated green job listings and training programs.
For educational institutions, structure course information clearly to be easily consumed and recommended by AI.
Leverage Open-Source Solutions: Where possible, adopt or contribute to open-source AI tools designed for social impact.
The open-source license for the Green Career Assistant (Capgemini, 2025) offers a model for collaborative development and wider reach in education technology.
Foster Cross-Sector Partnerships: Emulate the Capgemini-UNICEF model by engaging in public-private-youth partnerships.
These collaborations pool resources and expertise, enabling innovative solutions for complex challenges like climate action and workforce development.
Embrace Skills Transformation: Acknowledge that AI is rapidly changing core job skills (Nadi Albino, Capgemini, 2025).
Focus on identifying future skill gaps in your workforce or community and proactively integrate upskilling programs.
Champion Transparent AI: For any AI tool offering guidance or recommendations, prioritize transparency about its reasoning.
This builds user trust and fosters critical thinking, crucial for young people navigating their futures.

Tools, Metrics, and Cadence: Driving Impact

Tools:

Multi-agentic AI systems: For personalized, round-the-clock guidance.
Generative AI platforms: For conversational interfaces.
Knowledge graphs: For structured logic, reliable information, and verifiable decision-making.
Cloud-based AI infrastructure: Provided by partners like AWS for deployment and orchestration (Capgemini, 2025).
AI Model Development platforms: Such as those from Mistral AI, for innovative AI models (Capgemini, 2025).

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs):

User Engagement Rate: How frequently young people interact with the tool.
Matching Success Rate: The percentage of users successfully matched to relevant green job and training paths (early results show near 80 percent, Capgemini, 2025).
Skill Gap Reduction: Measured by pre- and post-tool assessments of perceived and actual skill readiness for green jobs.
Employability Outcomes: Tracking the number of users who secure green jobs or enter relevant training programs.
User Experience Ratings: Feedback on the ease of use, helpfulness, and transparency of recommendations.
Geographic Reach: Number of young people reached in vulnerable areas and regions affected by climate change.

Review Cadence:

Establish a quarterly review for operational performance and a bi-annual review for strategic impact.

Quarterly reviews should assess user feedback, technical performance (e.g., matching accuracy), and immediate adjustments.

Bi-annual reviews should evaluate the long-term impact on youth employability, skill development, and alignment with climate action goals, ensuring continuous improvement and scalability.

AI Glossary for Green Careers

Agentic AI: AI systems that not only understand and respond but also autonomously act on behalf of users, like completing multi-step tasks.
Green Careers: Jobs that contribute to preserving or restoring the environment, reducing energy consumption, or creating sustainable products and services.
Green Skills Gap: The disparity between the demand for skills needed in green jobs and the current availability of individuals possessing those skills.
Multi-agentic AI System: An AI architecture where multiple specialized AI agents work together to achieve a complex goal, offering more sophisticated and personalized interactions.
Generative AI: AI capable of creating new content, such as text, images, or code, often used for natural and conversational interactions.
Knowledge Graphs: Structured representations of information that connect entities and their relationships, enabling AI to provide reliable and verifiable data.
Youth Empowerment: Supporting young people to gain the skills, confidence, and opportunities to shape their own lives and contribute to their communities.
Climate Action: Efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to the impacts of climate change, often driving the need for green jobs.

Your Questions on AI-Powered Green Careers Answered

What is the Capgemini and UNICEF partnership focused on?
The partnership focuses on youth empowerment through education, skills development, and climate action, exemplified by the new AI-powered career assistant for green jobs (Capgemini, 2025).
What is the Green Career Assistant?
It is an AI-powered tool developed by Capgemini to help young people (age 16-24) discover green learning opportunities and match them with sustainable careers, initially in Brazil (Capgemini, 2025).
Who developed this AI solution?
The solution was developed by the winning team from Germany as part of Capgeminis Global Data Science Challenge (GDSC) 2025 (Capgemini, 2025).
What problem does the AI career assistant address?
It addresses the gap where over half of young people are interested in green jobs, but only 44 percent feel they have the right skills, by guiding them to local opportunities and training (Capgemini Research Institute and UNICEF’s Generation Unlimited).
Will the Green Career Assistant be available to others?
Yes, the winning solution will be made available under an open-source license, enabling broader adoption and impact globally (Capgemini, 2025).
How does Capgeminis GDSC work?
It is an annual company-wide initiative where nearly 1,500 Capgemini employees across 40 countries apply their data and AI expertise to solve critical global challenges (Capgemini, 2025).
What role do AWS and Mistral AI play?
Mistral AI provided the AI models and tools, while AWS delivered the cloud-based AI infrastructure for the solutions deployment and orchestration (Capgemini, 2025).

Conclusion: Equipping a Generation for the Green Economy

Elena, in her Brazilian community, now has a digital companion that understands her aspirations, sees her potential, and points her toward tangible green learning opportunities.

The invisible bridge to a sustainable future is becoming visible, one personalized recommendation at a time.

The work by Capgemini and UNICEF, fueled by the ingenuity of Capgeminis own employees and supported by cutting-edge AI partners, is more than just a technological marvel; it is a beacon of hope.

It demonstrates that collaboration, innovation, and a deep commitment to youth empowerment can indeed equip an entire generation to drive the green economy forward.

This is how we build a future where every young person, regardless of their starting point, can find their dignified livelihood and contribute to a healthier planet.

This is how we make a sustainable future real.

References

Capgemini. Capgemini develops agentic AI solution to support UNICEF in improving youth access to green careers.
Paris, 2025-12-02.

(URL not specified in source data).
Capgemini Research Institute and UNICEF’s Generation Unlimited. Youth Perspectives on Climate: Preparing for a Sustainable Future.
(Date not specified).

(URL not specified in source data).

Capgemini develops agentic AI solution to support UNICEF in improving youth access to green careers