NEET youth in Uganda innovate through green solutions and 21st-century skills
Adolescents and youth-led solutions for social impact for the communities and planet
A month after COP 28 took place in the United Arab Emirates, adolescents and young people in Uganda are actively engaging on the issue of climate change by developing innovations to tackle its impact.
Equipped with 21st-century skills, young people have been creating innovative solutions to mitigate climate change by addressing a wide range of problems such as troublesome aquatic plants, plastic waste, and deforestation. This is an example of the power and unlimited potential of the young generation in Uganda who – if given a chance and built the right skill set despite their educational background – can prevent the worsening of this crisis, keep the planet liveable for us, them, and the next generation, and protect the future of the planet.
UNICEF Uganda, within the scope of its Basic Education and Adolescent Development (BEAD) programme, supports the institutionalization of 21st-century skills-building training. It includes life skills training, digital skills training and social innovation and entrepreneurship skills training.
Integrated UPSHIFT (i-UPSHIFT) is one of the key trainings that develop social innovation and entrepreneurship skills of young people, especially those not in education or employment (NEET). It equips them with the skills and competencies necessary for a productive and successful transition to work life, such as critical thinking, problem-solving, creativity, collaboration, teamwork, and communication through a 3-month program that offers a 1-week boot camp and 2 to 3 months of mentorship that comes with financial support to implement the innovative solution in communities.
The program’s training modules were developed through a pilot initiated together with the International Labour Organization (ILO) in late 2021, where the best practice tools of both UNICEF and ILO were integrated while being contextualized to ensure they fit into the Ugandan context.
Since then, the training has been jointly rolled out across the country and more than 12,000 out-of-school vulnerable adolescents and youth including child mothers and refugees have received the opportunities to develop their skills. More than 1,700 of them created and implemented innovative solutions for climate change and other issues of concern in communities.
Among those green i-UPSHIFTers across the country, the Global Energy Saver team emerged as one of the prominent teams transforming communities through green innovation since 2022. Five youths who are school dropouts and a child mother formed a group in 2022 during the i-UPSHIFT programme. Their solution: eco-friendly and economic bio-briquettes to address the issue of deforestation ranked top in the pitch competition in Northern Uganda and thus was submitted to the global competition of imaGen Ventures.
It is a global initiative that aims to nurture a critical mass of young entrepreneurs dedicated to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, forming a part of Generation Unlimited (GenU), a leading global Public-Private-Youth Partnership that co-creates and delivers innovative solutions on a global scale launched by the UN Secretary-General at the 2018 UN General Assembly.
As a result of the global judging process, the Global Energy Saver team was awarded as a global winner of imaGen Ventures 2022 at COP27 last year, and since then, they evolved as a registered social enterprise and are on the scale-up journey of expanding its green business to reach 10,000 households in their surrounding communities.
With the dedicated support of their mentors from The Recreation Project, UNICEF’s partner for the i-UPSHIFT programme, the team advanced their innovation by procuring a site of production, designing machines for bigger-scale production in collaboration with Gulu University, and conducting further market analysis for better market penetration. Not only have they increased the daily production from 100 kg to 1.5 tons and decreased by 50% in production cost, but also trained fifty other vulnerable NEET young people in the community to upskill them with the technical skills of making bio-briquettes to get out of unemployment while promoting this green solution in communities.
As a part of the award, they also participated in GenU’s Global Incubation Week conducted in Amman, Jordan in September 2023. This workshop further equipped them with critical skills to advance as green entrepreneurs.
“Exploration of areas for improvement of our green business during the workshop in Jordan through mentorship sessions with successful Jordanian entrepreneurs and peer learning sessions with fellow youth from other GenU global winning teams enabled me to come up with fresh ideas, test them and fail quickly where necessary to find the best, most valuable innovation ideas,” said Albert Taule of the Global Energy Saver team.
“I have now gained self-competence and confidence, communication and interpersonal skills, self-awareness and empathy, assertiveness, and resilience, and coping with emotions. I have essential skills like problem-solving, creativity, collaboration, and leadership which have enabled me to take charge of my present and future as a green entrepreneur and a self-employed youth.”
"Building the skills of adolescents and youth by institutionalizing 21st-century skills – the skills required for the future world of work – in the national education and training systems is among key priorities of UNICEF–Government of Uganda Country Programme," stated Barno Mukhamadieva, UNICEF Uganda Chief of BEAD.
"Adolescents and young people including those out-of-school and NEET in Uganda can become agents of change in their own lives, communities, and society at large if they receive quality education and training in the skills needed for the future. Climate change is one of the key areas that adolescents and young people can contribute to by taking action to ensure a livable planet for themselves, young people, and future generations. We are confident that such opportunities will cultivate a generation of children and young people with innovative minds and competencies that will significantly contribute to the development and prosperity of Uganda."
