What we do ?

The YES global mission is grounded in and inspired by the United Nations Millennium Development agenda which highlights the urgent need for radical and innovative actions to provide productive and sustainable employment opportunities for millions of unemployed young people stuck in severe poverty in the developing world. YES Rwanda is one of the 55 YES country networks worldwide established to operationalise and translate the YES campaign into local realities.

YES Rwanda’s four priority programme areas are: Business and Entrepreneurship Development (BED), Youth Livelihoods (YL), Policy Research and Advocacy (PRA), and Communication and Outreach (C&O). In each of these four key programme areas, YES Rwanda develops and implements pilot projects that aim to create sustainable, gainful employment amongst Rwandese youth.

Business and Entrepreneurship Development: The concept of YES global and of YES Rwanda is primarily premised on promoting and supporting youth entrepreneurship, as a viable, practical and profitable way to realising the objective of creating thousands of productive jobs for youth.  Priority YES actions include the set up of business incubation facilities; conducting needs assessments for youth entrepreneurs and potential entrepreneurs; undertaking feasibility studies for youth entreprises; and developing a network for youth entrepreneurs, potential entrepreneurs and support agencies.

Youth Livelihoods: Rwandan Youth are faced with enormous livelihood challenges, often impeding their ability to exploit and optimise their potentials. HIV/AIDS, environmental degradation, unemployment, conflict and poor education standards, among others, are the main challenges that YES Rwanda will have to actively address in order to improve youth livelihoods. Priority YES actions include capacity building workshops and training initiatives aimed at providing vulnerable youths with skills that will enable them to gain employment.

Policy Research and Advocacy: Youth issues are cross cutting yet are often missing in the policy arena and will require a strong advocate in the policy process. Projects will be developed in youth rights, skills demand and development, business opportunities and structural barriers to youth enterprise development and productive employment.

Communication and Outreach: YES Rwanda recognises the socioeconomic diversity of the Rwandan Youth, and the related need for an all encompassing community and outreach programme to ensure inclusiveness. Priority actions include a Mapping project that aims to address the gap that exists in Rwanda regarding access to relevant employment information. Through a comprehensive national data gathering process Mapping aims to gather and profile information from both Rwandan youth groups and potential donor/support groups and present an online data base of all, with cross referencing search tools. This will provide a forum for research, communication and information dissemination. Specific outputs such as a recruitment website and a job desk will be set up and used as tools to practically address unemployment amongst profiled youths.