Growth in agriculture… is there anything cool for the youth?
This is a youth empowerment project aimed at enabling unemployed youth to earn a stable income through employment or self-employment by growing their career and/or entrepreneurship skills. The project is being implemented by Yusudi in partnership with Co-op Foundation.
Implementation will be in two phases:
It is expected that the tested and finalized online learning platform (Version 2) will be deployed for further use by young people across Kenya.
Personal attitude and skills play a significant role in ensuring one’s success in life. Co-op Bank Foundation, with support from MoneyGram Foundation, organized a six day career and mentorship workshop targeting students under Co-op Bank’s scholarship program. The workshop was aimed at boosting the students’ academic performance, helping them make better career choices while building requisite skills for academic and career success.
Three hundred and fifty students participated in the workshop. Trainers were drawn from The Ministry of Education, Ministry of Health, successful entrepreneurs and consulting firms offering career mentorship programs.
The participants appreciated the importance of self-awareness and emotional intelligence as the basis for values and character formation. Through the career planning process, the students came up with career plans that will guide them as they choose subjects to study in school and courses to pursue in colleges.
There is need to strengthen career planning through career clubs in schools. This will allow students to explore their career options and, with teachers’ support, organize for career related activities such as career talks to help them choose and learn more about the options they are interested in.
Jijali is a two-year youth empowerment program being implemented by Co-operative Bank Foundation in partnership with Yusudi. The program is funded by the Embassy of Finland purposefully for Co-operative Bank beneficiaries and Youth Saccos in the Bank’s database. The main objective of the program is to enhance access to employment among unemployed youths in Kenya by developing their skills for career start and entrepreneurship. Borrowed from the Swahili word “jijali”, the program seeks to foster a culture of innovation, intentionality and modernity among young people.
Jijali aims to train at least 2,500 youths on career and entrepreneurship in three phases. The training is delivered through a blended approach combining both face-to-face interaction and mentorship through online learning. 100 youths have so far been trained in Phase I while 400 youths are currently undergoing training in Phase II. Being the first of its kind in Kenya, lessons learned during implementation of the first two phases will be incorporated into a platform that is to be deployed online to reach at least 2,000 youths in Phase III.
