Community Empowerment Through Youth Employment: A Comparative Study of Social Programs for Youth Job Creation

Entrepreneurial training may be a better means to livelihoods for youth in Uganda today than vocational or traditional education models. Even those with university degrees have difficulties being selected from saturated applicant pools for professional careers; vocational training programs give their otherwise-uneducated or unskilled students the means to an occupation though positions are limited. In traditional education systems or vocational programs, supplementary education encouraging entrepreneurship can help create careers where opportunities are scarce. By mobilizing youth, communities prosper. These activities can even create direct community benefit themselves. This research observes the processes of both a vocational training model and a social entrepreneurship training model through observing two different organizations (Friends of Orphans and Educate, respectively). Methods used were surveying, interviews, observation, and research done at each organization in order to assess these models for efficiency (whether they were successfully placing students into career fields) as well as observe the benefit contributed to society through these trainings. Some quantitative data was used as support to the findings though most was qualitative, obtained through interviews and observation. The findings show that while both were able to give youth careers, the entrepreneurial trainings had a higher success rate in doing so. Additionally, being that Educate encourages their students to begin social enterprises, the community impact reached further than that of Friends of Orphans. Among the alumni observed for the study, interventions were put in place to help connect them through different communication media, programs were initialized (at Friends of Orphans), and organizations were better equipped to assess the impact of their programs