The project will support 50 Youth groups and 20 schools in providing self-employment skills, practical training sessions, exposure visits, business startup kits at group and individual level given the high unemployment rate and a biggest percentage of the Ugandan youth population landless. The skills will utilize small spaces for backyard gardening, waste management for income generation, value addition on agriculture produce and cottage industries at household and school community levels.
Despite being the majority, youth face problems like inability to own or access land, affordable financing for agribusiness start-ups and technical know-how for self-employment. Youth in working age category of 14-17 years are excluded from most development programming, while young women in male-dominated social setting are vulnerable to marginalization. Unemployed or underemployed in the informal sector characterized by low quality working conditions with unstable earnings, calls for skilling.
The project will attract the young in and out of schools for employable skills under the agriculture value-chain, which is critical for hands-on plus provision of start-up kits on a revolving basis to create a new generation of farmers, processors and traders recognized and given room to incubate their ideas to inspire others. Such support will include investment initiatives that improve youth livelihood by providing them with necessary skills that will be springboard for gainful employment.
The project will enable each youth and child acquire relevant skills to set up small businesses at household level to sustain homes and provide employment through a multiplier effect within the target as a sustainability strategy. Each youth group is made of 25 youth and a school community targets 100 pupils, hence 1250 Youth in 50 youth groups and 2000 pupils in 20 schools beneficiary reached, knowledge and skills transferred to their respective households of 7 - 10 persons improving lives.
This project has provided additional documentation in a Microsoft Word file (projdoc.doc).
