STOP YOUTH POVERTY

STOP YOUTH POVERTY – continuous reporting

 Stop Youth Poverty is our umbrella programme that was designed to help all our incubation projects to get young entrepreneurs to create jobs and employ other needy unemployed youth. Since we start this programme, we have seen Felix, Derick, Mami, Urica, Seth and others come through. Currently we have Allen who is on the verge of launching his own health beverage business, as soon as we are able to raise an amount of US$5,130. This seed money will immediately kick-start a viable business that will provide steady income for Allen and give 4 unemployed youth jobs. Allen will earn enough to become sustainable within a year. In the long term, he aims to create thousands of jobs for unemployed youth, due to the boom in the health and beverage markets.

By the end of this month, Rafiatu will be joining our Business Facilitation programme under our Stop Youth Poverty umbrella. The specific programme element helps single mothers earn a decent living, in Rafiatu’s case through bead jewelry making. She will be getting free accommodation and utilities, access to the Fashion Centre with all its facilities as well as support for consumables under a revolving fund system.

Even though the impact of all these incubation projects is very high, we have unfortunately not been able to attract even a tenth of the funding we need to provide timely support to a reasonable number of people at any given time,. This shortfall comes at a time when the number of jobless youth grows daily and along with the costs of providing office space and equipment for incubation.

As an NGO which is dedicated to contributing in a practical ways to stopping youth poverty through the concept of “Youth Creating Jobs For Youth”, we have continued to invest our monies and that of family, friends and acquaintances. Since the launch of this programme, we have also been fortunate to have support from several benevolent donors who together have given us US$.... out of the US$ needed to make this programme self-sustaining. We are forever grateful to all our donors – one-off and recurrent donors. However, we urgently need our current and new donors to kindly come to our aid to save this laudable programme.

To this end, we are therefore making a very special appeal to all individuals, institutions, corporate entities and grant foundations to help make STOP YOUTH POVERTY a sustainable programme that can self-reliantly set-up a minimum of 20 Youth Start-Ups each year. If you consider the minimum of 5 young people getting into full employment per incubation, we will be taking 5 x 20 = 100 unemployed youth off the job market each year. If we increase the number of incubators even by as little as 5 each year, we will be reducing unemployment by more than 1,000 in five years. This is a very conservative calculation, especially if we consider the domino effects that can follow, based on growth in confidence of donors and grant-givers in the concept of “Youth Creating Jobs For Youth”.

We need your benevolent donations and grants. Please rally round and help our STOP YOUTH POVERTY programme now. It will produce responsible citizens, reduce crime, stop dangerous migrations and contribute significantly to youth development.

Thank you for all your past generosity and may you find it in your heart to support this worthy cause even more