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YES Rwanda Lays the Foundation for Youth Employment Programming

Youth unemployment is one of the major pressing challenges in Rwanda with more than 100,000 young people entering the labor market yearly and only 12,000 jobs created. Whilst there has been some growth in the tourism, transportation and services sector, substantial investment is needed to ensure that jobs are created rapidly to respond to the massive employment needs.

In light of this reality, the Youth Employment Summit Rwanda Network (YES Rwanda) convened a retreat from November 5 – 6, 2005, to bring together the members of YES Rwanda and partners from its key funding and collaboration institutions including TROCAIRE, Norwegian People’s Aid (NPA) and the Government of Rwanda to review its recently developed plan of action.    The YES Country Network Global Coordinator facilitated this workshop aimed at developing an institutional framework for the implementation of YES Rwanda future activities.

Over the next five years, YES Rwanda will focus on five key areas: (1) Building capacity of NGOs to develop and implement livelihood programming for youth; (2) Supporting entrepreneurship development in tourism and services sector; (3) Building YES Rwanda as an institution; (4) Carrying out research and advocacy on youth employment; and (5) Communicating lessons learned and best practices and building relationships. With the help of key local partners including the Government of Rwanda, the organization is currently conducting a serious of consultations with development partners aimed at nurturing local partnerships to roll out youth employment projects.

For more information on YES Rwanda, contact Frank Mukama at: Francom56@yahoo.co.uk or visit its website: http://projects.takingitglobal.org/YES-Rwanda