The Youth Entrepreneurship Training Programme (YETP) was set up as a collaboration between Survivors Fund (SURF) and the Association of Student Genocide Survivors (AERG) with the aim of contributing to the reduction of youth unemployment in Rwanda, focusing on university graduates and technical school leavers. YETP was made possible through with funding from S and N Kattan.
Its guiding vision is to develop a national centre of excellence in the development of entrepreneurship skills that will contribute to the reduction of unemployment amongst Rwandan youth. The guiding mission is to avail responsive, youth-friendly entrepreneurship training programmes and facilitate the creation of networks and links to develop financial and non-financial support, in order to reduce youth unemployment in Rwanda.
Under its entrepreneurship programme, Education into Employment (EiE) has developed and delivered 60 hours of entrepreneurship training as an alternative solution to young graduates and school leavers with the ambition and spirit to start their own businesses and create decent employment.
The 6 month pilot phase started in April 2012 with one hundred and fifty students from nine universities and higher learning institutes around Kigali, grouped in five classes with thirty students in each group. The groups were trained by Jacques Sezikeye. A short film about the training at one of the participating universities, Kigali Independent University (ULK), can be viewed here:
A report on the pilot of YETP is available here, which reviews the entrepreneurship training activity progress for the pilot phase and presents the major accomplishments, challenges and recommendations as well as presenting a way forward.
Following the completion of the training, a team from Project Umubano provided further coaching and mentoring for 100 of the students over a one week intensive period in July to support them in developing their business plans, which were then competitively pitched for funding to a panel of British MPs.
Six participants were invited to present to the panel, and the winning projects will share in the prize of access to start-up loans from a loan guarantee fund of FRW 5 million (£5,000).
Survivors Fund (SURF) is now working to identify further sources of funding to extend YETP following the success of the pilot.