The Blog

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.

On the 2nd of December 2017, 14 young Gambian, mostly comprised of Architects, Engineers, Contractors and Masonry workers, travelled to The Auroville Earth Institute in India and attended a two weeks training program on Compressed Stabilised Earth Blocks (CSEB) technology.

Dawda Fadera, the Secretary-General and Head of Civil Service, launched the National Youth Development Fund on behalf of Adama Barrow, President of the Republic of the Gambia during the official opening ceremony of 12th National Youth Conference and Festival (NAYCONF 2017) currently underway in Basse, Upper River Region.

YEP featured in the most recent The Gambia - EU newsletter as one of the projects visited by the EU Director and Deputy Managing Director for Africa.

The National Association of Cooperative Credit Unions of The Gambia (NACCUG) with support from the Gambia Youth Empowerment Project (YEP) have successfully organised a Credit Unions Managers' Conference. It was held from 8 to 9 December 2017 at the Regional Education Directorate 1 in Kanifing. The conference is part of the activities implemented under the framework of YEP and seeks to bring together Credit Union Managers to brainstorm on innovation products and services attractive to young people to enhance youth participation in credit unions. The initiative was also meant to foster a cross breeding of ideas and further strengthen the ties of cooperation among Credit Union Managers for enhanced viability of the credit union movements in The Gambia.