Empowering youth to create jobs
Young people training for tailoring careers. The ILO has started a programme where it gives skills to youths, who are then required to pass on these same skills to other young people, creating a ripple effect File photo
What you need to know:
New tactic. With the number of unemployed qualified young people ever increasing, new methods of tackling the problem need to be applied. If a few can help the majority to gain skills, maybe this could lessen the burden.
Uganda ranks highly when it comes to issues of employment with university institutions churning out thousands of students each passing year. However, few of these get lucky to get employment. The majority usually paint the streets brown with their application forms.
First priority
What is intriguing is few will even consider giving entrepreneurship first priority all in the name of hoping to get employment.
It’s against such a background that the International Labor Organisation (ILO) in partnership with AIESEC International has trained a number of young people in business idea generation.
The workshop that took place at Makerere University Business School, was aimed at empowering youth with skills to go out and teach their contemporaries how to be job creators.
However, you might question how effective the one week workshop is in building this group of select students who were passed out. Michael Male, one of the participants, says it has broadened his thinking and also helped him understand the nature of the business environment today.
“I think I am ready to teach other youth out there and help them generate good business ideas.
A famous quote by Robert Frost says, “I took the road less travelled and that is what made all the difference.” Sometimes we don’t have to wait for circumstances to challenge us before we react. Rather than wait to finish school and then start a business, the participants were advised to generate their business ideas and get empowered to start a business.
Robert Mawanda, the national project coordinator Youth Entrepreneurship Facility – Uganda, said the main aim of the workshop was to train the youth so that they go out and train other fellow youth. The training would also equip them with the relevant information to be able to teach their fellow youth.
Entrepreneurial discipline
The five-day training identified a group of more than 30 youth whose main role is to pass on skills to other youth in universities and other centers identified by Aiesec.
Entrepreneurship as a discipline is a field that most youth resort to as a last resort after they have failed to get jobs they qualified for in school, according to the organisers. Rather than wait for them to leave school, the ILO chose to give them this information now so that they can get what to do after school.
The 30 youth who have been passed out are also expected to identify students in schools who have good business ideas. These will get special training on how to polish up their ideas and ILO in the process will try to link them to potential financiers who will help them execute their ideas. The workshop is a long term programme aimed at addressing the unemployment challenges faced by the youth today and also be able to empower them to create jobs and be able to employ their fellow youth.
Members who have been passed out have the ability to run an entrepreneurship project for a whole year using a curriculum approved by ILO for credibility. They will in turn be able to pass on the training in places they are going to be working, which include Kampala, Jinja, Wakiso, and Iganga.
The AIESEC affiliates will conduct 12 workshops in each of the districts that have been selected.
“I expect that after this training, the guys we have trained will start their own businesses utilising the skills imparted during the workshops,” says Isaac Kalyesubula, the president of AIESEC Uganda.
