Enhancing Youth Skills Development and Employment Opportunities in Kivu
In the East of DR Congo, unemployment, underemployment and low wages make youth
vulnerable to recruitment into armed groups, exploitation, drugs and crime. Young women
and vulnerable youth face a particularly difficult situation. Many youth lack relevant skills
in demand in the labour market. Moreover, the country’s skills development system was
ill-equipped to provide youth with the kinds of in-demand skills sought by potential employers.
Investing in training and skills is needed to strengthen socio-economic resilience
and successful employment opportunities for youth.
Our partnership
KIYO and the African Social Cohesion Entrepreneurship Network (ASCEN) have been partners since 2022. KIYO and ASCEN learn from each other’s work with youth as well as from other KIYO partners through KIYO’s overall programme. In the DGD 2022-2026 programme, KIYO and ASCEN will focuses on the following activities together :
- Strengthening the learning environments of Technical and Professional Training Centers that provide vocational trainings. These centers will be accompanied in enriching their pedagogical approaches by including the teaching of life skills, in addition to technical skills, in their vocational courses.
- Organising reflection and career orientation activities to help youth make meaningful choices.
Offering vocational trainings to youth of their choosing with a high chance of employment. These include: masonry, mechanics, welding, tailoring, hairdressing, culinary art, livestock breeding, agribusiness, etc. - Accompanying youth in their search for employment or in developing their own income-generating activity. The accompaniment is done by voluntary mentors which are youth from the communities who have themselves successfully gone through a process of socioeconomic empowerment and who are trained by ASCEN to accompany other youth as experience experts.
With our joint programme, we work on two of our four areas of empowerment:
