The Blog

Saturday was a day of youth celebration at the Gambia International Trade Fair. The Youth Empowerment Project (YEP), in partnership with the Gambia Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI), promoted a Youth Day to celebrate the creative minds of young entrepreneurs and to showcase their products.

The Youth Empowerment Project (YEP) handed over to two Nissan Patrol 4x4 vehicles to its main project counterparts, the Ministry of Trade, Industry, Regional Interaction and Employment and the Ministry of Youth and Sports to facilitate project implementation. YEP aims to build on and strengthen the existing structures in support of youth entrepreneurship and employment. The project counts more than 20 implementing partners from both the public and private sectors working together to create opportunities to youth. In parallel, YEP supports and fosters the capacities of Gambian institutions to sustain the benefits beyond the project lifetime.

The Youth Empowerment Project YEP on Wednesday 14th March 2018 has handed five (5) groundnut decorticating machines worth about half million dalasis to four (4) processors/traders and one (1) farmer group in the North Bank and Central River Regions in an effort to create jobs for young people in agro-processing. Each machine can decorticate one ton (1000kg) of groundnuts in every one hour. The supply of these equipment is expected to create five fifty (50) direct jobs for operations and additional thirty jobs (30) for each machine for cleaning, sorting and packaging of the products.

February 15th & 16th 2018 marked the 2nd edition of the Youth Entrepreneurship Summit+Job Fair which was organized by the Startup Incubator Gambia (SIG) in collaboration with Youth Empowerment Project (YEP), the Young Entrepreneurs Association (YEA), and Partners in Employment (PIE) at Kairaba Beach Hotel.

Youth associations, public and private organizations today announced their support of a roadmap to empower youth in The Gambia. The Youth and Trade Roadmap, which has been developed as part of the International Trade Centre’s Youth Empowerment Project (YEP), places skills development and entrepreneurship at the heart of a new effort to create jobs and opportunities in the West African country.

The SkYE Fund is a results-based competitive funding model that ensures the critical importance of training youth to meet existing job needs, or in the case of self-employment, successfully meet market opportunities. In the pilot phase, the SkYE Fund aims to equip 1,000 Gambian youth with market-relevant technical and vocational skills in partnership with local training institutions.

In partnership with the Association of Small Scale Enterprises in Tourism, YEP supported a study tour for 17 young entrepreneurs to visit the well-established Dakar Farmers Market in Senegal. Participants engaged with practical exercises on developing entrepreneurial skills and improving the quality of their products.

The first class of the Youth Mentorship Programme graduated on 10 February. The programme was organized by the Global Youth Innovation Network in the Gambia with YEP support.  The 25 young mentees went through an intensive three months mentoring on enterprise management.

On 16th January, the people of Janjanbureh staged the Janjanbureh Kankurang Festival after a break of decades (the last festival that attracted local and few international visitors was held in the 80s). The 2018 Kankurang festival was attended by both local and international tourists from over 10 identified countries (Senegal, Mali, Mauritania, UK, Belgium, Bulgaria, Finland, Norway, Austria, Switzerland and USA). The Youth Empowerment Project (YEP) supported the festival organising committee in collaboration with the National Centre for Arts and Culture, the Gambia Tourism Board and the Association of Small Scale Enterprises in Tourism.