Youth Livilhood Project (YLP)
The Youth Livilhood Program is a rolling program targeting the poor and unemployed youths in all Districts in Uganda.
The Programme is implemented under the Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development (MGLSD). It is be financed initially from Government own resources (with a possibility of development partners’ support in the future).
YLP is a community demand-driven Programme that is implemented with guidance from the Central Government and the Local Governments. The funds are advanced to the Youth Interest Groups (YIG) in form of a Revolving Fund
In order to increase outreach and enhance sustainability of the Programme.
The overall Programme Development Objective (PDO) of the YLP is to empower the target youth in Uganda to harness their socio-economic potential and
Increase self-employment opportunities and income levels.
Specific Objectives
(i) To provide youth with marketable vocational skills and tool kits for
Self-employment and job creation.
(ii) To provide financial support to enable the youth establish Income Generating Activities (IGAs).
(iii) To Provide the youth with entrepreneurship and life skills as an integral part of their livelihoods.
(iv) To provide youth with relevant knowledge and information for attitudinal change (positive mind set change).
In Kaliro, the YLP program is implemented in all the 11 Sub Counties and 1 Town Council with a total of 87 groups. So far 610 million shillings has been disbursed and only sixty four (64) groups have repaid some money giving a total of 61 million. The recovery rate so far stands at 10%.
However, despite the low recovery rate, the program has increased the number of youths involved in income generating activities like Boda Boda ridding, Produce buying and selling, piggery, and livestock trade. This has helped to reduce the number unemployed youths and also improved their income levels.
Challenges;
1. Some beneficiaries share project funds, this makes the project to lose focus to the main objective.
2. All groups don’t repay according to their repayment schedules. This has made the program to slow down since it is a revolving fund.
3. Some groups claim their inputs were affected by disease like swine-pigs while others claim theft of the project inputs.
4. Refusal to place signposts to projects hinders monitoring. This has caused some groups to change addresses without the informing the technical people hence making monitoring a problem
Delayed release of operational fund is yet another big challenge that causes the program to lag behind.
5. The attitude of the youths toward the YLP funds affected the progress of the program. Right from the commencement of the project youths and other leaders perceived that it was free money given to youths to boost their businesses.
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