. Out of –School Young Girls and Young Single Mothers Aged 15-24

Eastleighwood Youth Forum Organization is always determined to work with different stakeholders to bridge the gender knowledge gap in Eastleigh community through providing work/business based capacity building skills trainings to 400 young mothers and girls by the end of 2016. Through mentorship and skills trainings, 400 women will be supported by the organization to come up with viable business plans and establish 100 businesses to open up more job opportunities to other young women and girls for sustainable development.

Our objectives include;

To create a stimulating environment for young women and girls entrepreneurs to lead social change in Eastleigh Society.

To conduct household and individual Social-economic Assessments to establish the specific economic needs of the program target group.

To enroll 400 young mothers and girls on basic Micro-enterprise Vocational skills training by the end of 2016.

To increase accessibility of young mothers & girls to micro-credits and basic financial support for establishing successful Small Income Generating Activities (IGAs).

To establish strong local and National Support networks for young mothers & women entrepreneurs to provide grant & mentorship services.

To develop a localized entrepreneurship training/mentorship curriculum for the upcoming young entrepreneurs by the end of 2015.

We mainly focus on;

Mapping:

Where we conduct the trained personnel from the organization and establish specific boundaries from the target community and identify various local leaders & stakeholders who will be supporting the implementation of the project. This will also facilitate and ease the identification of the target group (Out-of-School Young mothers & girls aged between 15-24 years) to be recruited into the program.

Stakeholders/Gatekeepers meeting:

In this meeting we aim to target and engage with the local leaders and stakeholders in the process of identifying the specific local needs of the target group. This information will serve as the baseline to develop effective HHs and Individual Social Economic tools for effective data management and recruitment process.

HHs & Individual Social Economic Assessments:

The activity targets to identify and recruit eligible target group Out-of-School Young mothers & girls aged between 15-24 years) with special social economic needs. This is done through designing of the general and personal Assessment tools to rate the participant needs in order of their priority to identify the most needy and urgent cases to recruit into the program. This Assessment is conducted through Home visits &social gatherings. The results of the assessments is analyzed and documented for reference during the project implementation.

Recruitment of Target group:

The target group recruited are the 400 drop outs from school especially young Mothers and girls aged between 15 & 24years.They are selected on the basis of the ranking of the Social economic assessment results. Eligible program participants are then subjected to the organizational policy and go thorough orientation of the program objectives prior to the actual project implementation. This helps them get the wider understanding of why they are being targeted and the expected end results of the project.

Vocational Trainings:

Through this project, various vocational skills trainings are initiated to equip the trainees with necessary capacities & skills to fit into the current labor/business market. A localized Training Curriculum is developed to facilitate the exchange of knowledge and experiences between the trainers and the trainees. The vocational training is integrated to provide basic language skills-to bridge the language barrier gap for those Somali Young women and girls who do not speak neither Kiswahili nor English and this facilitates smooth communication between them and their future customers ; basic Micro-enterprise/ entrepreneurship, Vocational skills training to give them, tips of establishing small income generating activities for sustainable livelihoods, business specific skills including saloon, tailoring and embroidery. These skills aim to expand their knowledge and capacities to venture into the current business market demands. The vocational training targets 50 drop outs from school especially Somali Young women and girls per Quarter for 8 Quarters by the end of 2016 to add-up-to 400 training participants.

This project aims to empowering young Somali people with informal education to acquire basic life skills and entrepreneurship/ mentorship skills to lead the descent life in Eastleigh Community.50 youths were trained in various vocational skills including basic computer skills, basic entrepreneurship and media production courses. In this year, we have enrolled 20 who are currently undertaking a 3months course in Movie Scripting and recording.