Youths urged to embrace vocational skills

SKILLING

The Director Business advisory and Consultancy services of Enterprise Uganda, Rosemary Mutyabule has advised youth to embrace technical skills for purposes of securing a sustainable future.

Mutyabule said unemployment has been and still is the biggest challenge amongst youth because a number of them do not have hands-on skills to generate business ideas.

"Unemployment has been the major problem amongst most youth, and we decided to support the young entrepreneurs in vocational colleges to get the skills to do business on their own under the skill for life program," Mutyabule said.

According to Mutyabule, students from different institutions should give priority to these skills so that they can build themselves into better entrepreneurs.

"With such skills, the youth are able to break the dependency syndrome by starting up their own business ventures, obtaining their own incomes and also employing their family and community members," Mutyabule expounded.

Mutyabule said this during the handover of rewards from Uganda Breweries Limited (UBL) to youth from Northern Uganda for their startup businesses at the limited offices in Luzira yesterday.

The Corporate Relations Director UBL, Charity Ekudu affirmed the company's commitment to contributing to the development of Uganda saying she was pleased that the students from the first cohort of their skills for life initiative had completed with excellent performance.

"We decided to come up with a program that seeks education because it is critical and pair it with skills development which is entrepreneurial and we are happy that the first batch has performed really well," Ekudu said.

"When you are looking for value for money, you put it where you see returns. When we revisited our approach of sponsoring university students to sponsor technical, vocational and entrepreneurship training, we wanted to create a more visible impact," she said.

Ekudu said that the company sources a lot of raw materials from different communities in which they operate and thus a need for giving back to them.

The youths that excelled in the UBL skills for life program were given a capital award of 15 million Ugandan shillings. The students were from Kitgum Technical Institute and Daniel Comboni College.

In October 2018 under the skills for life scheme, UBL offered 30 scholarships worth sh116 million to young, academically talented but financially challenged students from the farming communities in Northern Uganda.

The scholarship funds were to cover tuition, entrepreneurship training and mentorship that enabled the students to start businesses in their communities.

"From the total beneficiaries that we sponsored and skilled, we are happy to share that all have finished school and gone ahead to started businesses of their own. However, the 10 youths that we are rewarding put up exceptional and valuable businesses that we are proud to recognize," Mutyabule emphasized.

On the criteria used to select these youths Mutyabule said, "We selected the best young entrepreneurs based on their capacity to execute and implement business projects. We also assessed the sales that were made since they started the business, profits made, number of employment opportunities that have been created by the business and the general contribution of the business to the neighboring community."

The youths were rewarded in different categories which were the platinum award, gold award, silver award, bronze award, and copper award.

Since the inception of Enterprise Uganda in 2001, the Uganda Breweries Skills for Life Initiative has awarded over 200 university scholarships to bright and needy students across East Africa, with 40 of them from Uganda.

In 2017, UBL re-focused its scholarships to focus on technical and vocational courses in response to the cry for more practical entrepreneurial skills for the youth to reduce unemployment levels around the country. UBL has so far awarded scholarships worth Ugsh 230m to 70 students in vocational schools in Northern, Western and Central Uganda.

Nelson Mandela, a beneficiary and graduate with a national certificate in electrical installations and systems maintenance from Comboni technical college, who walked away with a sh2.5m reward thanked UBL and enterprise Uganda for the opportunity.