Social – Economic Empowerment of Youth

Vision
To empower youth, refugees and other vulnerable groups with Technical and Vocational skills for better livelihood and to fight house-hold proverty.

Mission
To promote the socio-economic welfare of vulnerable communities and poor families affected by HIV / AIDS by helping them to create income generating projects for their self sustenance.

Goal
To empower youths especially the school drop-outs with technical and vocational skills for their social-economic transformation and to fight house-hold poverty.

Achievements: -

• 6 manual table knitting machines and 1 industrial manual knitting machine worth USD 3,250 with capacity of training 30 youths per annum have These Machines have been procured and now in use.

• Youths have been acquired technical skill in sweater knitting and are employed by our Organization to manufacture sweaters for schools who have fixed their orders with our organization. They also train other youths in sweater knitting.

• The project is generating income for self sustenance through supplying sweaters to schools and institutions. Our organization is able to replenish training materials for training more youths especially school drop-outs in sweater knitting.

Challenges; -

The Foundation needs: -

The initiative is still operating in rented premises it needs to own training premises in order to minimize operation costs.

The initiative is committed to overcome the above challenges in order to train 300 vulnerable and school drop-outs in 2 years.

Future plans are; -

• To acquire 5 acres of land in for both technical skill training institute and sweater knitting industry.
• To roll out technical skill empowerment to youths and other vulnerable groups in Uganda and in other areas of operations.

Problem statement

Uganda is dominated by youth who are unemployed or underemployed. They spend most of their time gambling or doing less productive work for their survival. These are the youth who need our urgent help.

Many engage in criminal activities to earn a living. However, majority have fear of the poor social-economic life style after abandoning their previous dubious source of income. Worse still, some are abandoned by their family members and are regarded as social evils.

Because of this, it becomes very difficult for youth to live a contructive crime free life and those who have done so may not remain committed to their God because of the social-economic problems.

In view of the above, we have come up with a program of technical skill empowerment of youths and other vulnerable groups for social economic transformation for self sustenance and remain committed faithfuls to God.

Vocational &Technical Skills Development Project

This project has contributed to building Uganda’s human capital skills development capacity, particularly in education, agriculture and vocational and technical skills. This venture has creating and responded to labor market demands and propelled productivity nationally in Uganda.

The project objectives are to fight alerming levels of unemployment among young people, improve equitable access, quality and relevance of skills training and research that has led to job creation and self-employment. This is a life changing venture!

Ugandan President - Gen. Yoweri Museveni, during his latest “State of Nation Address” said that “…only 300,000 people are employed by Uganda government out of nearly 40 million people in Uganda and we do not have any vacancies anywhere in government offices. I strongly advise young people to create jobs instead of looking for employment…” President Museveni said.

UNICEF recent report indicated that 68% of Ugandans are totally unemployed and living in abject poverty. The ABA Foundation conducted a research on how to fight the alarming levels of unemployment and poverty among Ugandan youths and we carried out a training needs appraisal in which young adults including University graduates, school drop-outs, single mothers, widows, and other vulnerable groups opted for vocational and technical skills development project.

The provision of Vocational and Technical Skills (tailoring and garment cutting, secretarial, painting, art and design, agriculture, brick laying, carpentry and joinery etc) to young adults in Uganda has not only catered for self–sustenance, but also employment which has enabled them to generate income and fight household poverty. Our biggest problem at the moment is that we are operating under meager financial envelope amidst a lot of social responsibility!

This initiative marked the beginning of what has become a fruitful and rewarding linkage between the world of industry and academia. We have strongly contributed to the development of a relevant and highly skilled workforce that has propelled productivity and national development. We shall continue to emphasize the need for a strengthened linkage with industries in order to have our skilled graduates, who are very productive so that Uganda continues to benefits from the East African Community integration.

Recent research by Human Rights Watch indicated that 89% of Refugees and People staying in Internally Displaced Peoples Camps engage in prostitution which has led to an increase in HIV / AIDS scourge. These Technical and Vocational Training Centers are meant to fight the risky behavior, empower them to fight house hold Poverty and Combat the spread of HIV / AIDS.

We empower Women, Youth, Children, Widows, Refugees, and Disabled through Training programs and Capacity building. We run a Home Care Bay and Rehabilitation Centers for orphans and destitute children especially those running away from the civil war in the volatile world’s newest nation of South Sudan.

We raise Awareness in the Communities against HIV / AIDS and other Killer Diseases. We also promote Awareness among Communities by running Development Programs to Fight House Hold Poverty and Promotion of Income Generation at Homestead Level.