Low cost income solutions to poverty. Attainable, applicable and sustainable ideas for enterprise for youth.
Gatungo Charles moved to Kampala City looking for work when he was young, he made a living while there from taking odd jobs that would pay very little. When Charles fell ill, with no income and no formal skills he could no longer make ends meet. At his wit’s end, he moved back to the village, but, even then he did not have any clear skills to fall back on and was therefore still not able to earn a living.
Charles thought hard about what he would be able to do to get out of the poverty trap he was in, it was then that he was introduced to TeamUp Uganda, he joined the Youth Farmer Field School in Nsiisi Village and was able to learn good agronomy skills on the demonstration plots set up by HRNS Uganda. Charles put into practice all that he was taught, and then when the opportunity to gain further skills from sawa world arose he jumped to take advantage of it.
TeamUp Uganda supported sawa world under the innovation fund to deliver low cost innovative solutions to improve the livelihood prospects of 500 young people that required limited start up capital. Making paper bags was one of the skills chosen by the youth since it required; no formal skills could be started with limited capital, was easy to learn, as well as being 100 percent recyclable. This would mitigate the use of plastic bags in the community that could not be recycled as the process emitted toxic and poisonous gas into the environment.
For youth like Charles, low income solutions to poverty alleviation is a sustainable tool due to their easy and quick application, as they see that they can use the skill learnt to complement their other sources of income, their ambition rises even higher. Once they are able to conquer the small challenges then they can look for even better skills. The self esteem seen in Charles’s eyes in not only learning a new skill, making some money from it, socialising with his group members and getting recognised in the community can be duplicated to build communities one youth, one skill and one smile at a time.
TeamUp is a new multi-sectoral approach to development cooperation initiated by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and managed as well as co-financed through the three foundations of Deutsche Stiftung Weltbevölkerung (DSW), Hanns R. Neumann Stiftung (HRNS), and Siemens Stiftung. The program unites the expertise, networks, and resources of three local organizations, namely; Action 4 Health Uganda (A4HU), Hanns R. Neumann Stiftung Africa (HRNS), and Whave Solutions implemented in the multi sectors of Health, Agriculture as well as Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH).
