Youth Communities are in need of people that will LEAD!

In Uganda, Youth - the Community - has for a longtime been synonymous with poverty, exploitation, displacement, corruption, early pregnancies, lack of basic skills for development and exclusion in national and local government planning, in-effective youth adult partnerships, non-participation of youth are some of the key bottlenecks facing Uganda’s Youth! This is indicative of the immense pressure on Youth on multiple levels.

ActionAid Busiki LRP reviewed its Youth engagements and shifted focus to monitoring acquired skills, supporting income generating ventures and harnessing leadership possibilities.  Prior to this, Youth qualitative growth trends across the three sub counties that ActionAid Busiki LRP works in had been slow but steady over the years and a number of initiatives taken in the recent years has started yielding qualitative results.

The paradigm shift kicked off on its course in 2013, but over the past year, it has been extended to a number of strategic approaches to guarantee exposure and information sharing as best practice. The growth trend in the last few months has been encouraging with Youth themselves presenting ideas to Action Aid for technical support. One particular event was the Youth Reporting and Dialogue meeting. In this gathering, the Youth converged together to identify key actions points that would anchor their 2014-2015 development plans. This is a key learning and strategic platform for Actionaid as regards Youth relevant programming.

Key to note also is the Youth Camp where the Youth got an opportunity to understand ActionAid programming as pertains to the Youth as well as the key issues and approaches that the Youth feel perceive as pivotal in guiding the processes geared towards achieving the Key Change Promise 6: "By 2017, we will have mobilized over five million Youth to take sustained action towards building a poverty-free planet".

We don't want to close our eyes because we don't want to miss
another moment

 Today, there is an accelerated and evidently sustainable upward growth in most Youth. The Youth and ActionAid have decided to collaborate to further build on the growth trajectory and set a visionary target - that of doubling young people’s overall participation in Leadership opportunities and Local Government programmes & processes in the coming years.