Agriculture

In agriculture, TeamUp works with youth to improve their economic situation through:

  • Income-generating activities (agricultural projects and other businesses)
  • Access to markets
  • Access to start-up capital
  • Financial inclusion through VSLAs
  • Financial literacy and business education
  • Joint household budgeting
  • Improving young people’s access to land and agricultural inputs
  • Public-private partnerships for youth enterprises
  • Strong youth organisations at different levels

Our strategies in agriculture and agribusiness include:

  • Youth Farmer Field Schools approach: youth receive hands-on training in best agricultural practices for better yields, food security and incomes.
  • Mentorship: Peer-to-peer mentorship between successful entrepreneurs from TeamUp 1 and new youth entrepreneurs focusing on business identification, planning, management, and compliance.
  • Networking and exchange visits: Exposing the youth to successful enterprises for benchmarking and knowledge sharing.
  • Market linkages: Identifying and creating access to markets for youth products, including innovative strategies like mobile markets.

Jennifer Nakato, operations manager, Kamuli Youth millers

  • Institutional growth: Supporting youth structures to operate formally and professionally.
  • Cool parenting dialogues: highlighting the youth’s potential and motivating parents to provide the necessary support including land for agricultural activities and allowing space for meetings.
  • Change agents: selected community members are trained on conflict resolution, mediation, counselling, vision journey processes and gender-based violence referral pathways. These cascade the information to other community members through household visits and community meetings.
  • Gender household model and couple seminars: community-level gender awareness sessions focus on joint planning and decision-making at household level and the potential benefits for youth-led households.
  • Special events and exhibitions: these give the youth a platform to exhibit and promote their businesses and create network with other entrepreneurs.