Youth

Uganda developed its initial ICT national policy in 2003 in which the framework document recognized that the country needed to embrace the goal of lifelong education for all. The policy also addresses literacy improvement and human resource capacity-building with strategies that include integrating ICT into mainstream educational curricula as well as other literacy programmes to provide for equitable access for all students regardless of level. Efforts have been made to introduce ICT both in primary and secondary schools of Uganda so as to equip learners with the necessary skills and tools that would prepare them for the job market.

Although the country’s national ICT policy lays emphasis on providing infrastructure to schools, this has not yet been realized mainly in rural schools as the adoption level is still low.

There have been hindrances ranging from low income to support the programme, limited power supply to rural schools, shortage of ICT teachers and many others. Irrespective of these challenges, the government has moved on to make ICT education as one of the compulsory subsidiary subjects at secondary levels of education. It is a very big challenge to many rural students and schools as they can’t afford to own computers as their counterparts in urban schools which has created a digital divide among the rural and urban students.

It is behind this background that the Nakaseke Rural Youth Sustainable Livelihoods Initiative was established. The project is conducting an ICT training programme to rural schools and communities to help them acquire skills as a means for literacy improvement and human resource capacity-building in rural areas.

The Nakaseke Rural Youth Sustainable Livelihoods Initiative, a rural youth project that also runs other community development programmes on agriculture and health, started with 3 laptop computers that we used to carry out training. As of now, the project has grown and boasts of 15 mobile computers that can at least accommodate the average class population of 60 students at a ratio of about 4:1. Our project has a committed, competent and experienced training team of trainers with a very rich expertise in conducting and managing ICT training classes. Each day of the week, the team moves to the different schools and communities as per the training schedules. The training involves both theory and practical tailor made lessons.

The Global Changemakers model is unique in it's kind as it provides a round approach that goes from identifying promising talent, enhancing their capacity through training, tools and connections to supporting their initiatives. Changemakers are running successful, ground breaking initiatives. Since 2007 Global Changemakers has been working with the most talented youth Globally and we have developed online educational materials that allow young people to learn the necessary skills to design and implement their own world-changing ideas. Since April 2014 Global Changemakers has worked on translating this tools to be able to reach out to more youth. We have just finished the Italian version of this proven and unique tools.

Within a session of 6 months, 30 youths in 3 groups with 10 members per group receive free Computer training in applications related to cybercafé business services:
1. Introduction to computer: Ms. Office and Typing
2. Graphic design
3. Internet /web services.
Simultaneously, these youths will receive an entrepreneurship mentorship - Each group is requested to identify a local mentor and the Project assigns another mentor to each Group (a mentor: An experienced business person with 15+ years of diverse general business experience). These mentors help the group members to complete 9 modules course intended to help them create a business plan for the group and to document this plan with an elevator pitch, a business plan summary, and an Investment Profile. 9 modules course:
1. Mission, opportunity and strategy
2. External Environment
3. Target Market statement
4. Operations and value chain
5. Organization/Human Resource
6. Business Model
7. Metrics
8. Operating Plan
9. Financing .
At completion of this training & mentorship, each group (Leader) present their Business Plan Summary to Project and partners Leadership, mentors, and invited audience in a Public graduation conference. Each group then receive a loan package of basic equipments worth not exceeding 3200 $, respectively to their business plan. For self-sustainability, the program requires loan repayment with interests of 12-15% if paid within 6 months and 12 months respectively.

Note: the 1 slum 100 computers project was developed and is operated by International Transformation Foundation (ITF) a youth led nonprofit organization on principles of stimulus and inspiration of change and transformation of youth for individual achievement. Providing youth self development programs encompassing leadership and entrepreneurship. ITF Secretariat is based in Nairobi-Kenya under the leadership of Secretary General-Mr. Venuste Kubwimana.

Voces Comunes is a communication project developed for the youth of indigenous and afro-descendent communities in Colombia. Through practical workshops in their territories and continous accompaniment, they learn how to operate the computer, audio and video equipment that the project provides them, the communities will acknowledge and strengthen their communication skills with the use of the ICTs. All this through: A) An 8 days workshop, B) A continuos technical and theoretical accompaniment, C) A second workshop (a 4 days re enforcement workshop), D) the communities create their own communication collective and learn to produce their own content and media, allowing them to share their visions, cultures and processes in a better way, a way of their own.

Communication is a powerful tool that contributes to social inclusion, fostering self-recognition and community empowerment. It provides communities with the possibility to design and disseminate messages not just about their cosmovision but also using their own language and symbols. If such messages emerge from each community, they will respond to their particular context and, therefore, they will contribute to actual empowerment and self-advocacy. If youth of ethnical communities have access to the new technologies they will be able to produce accurate information about themselves. Moreover, they will have the power to make visible their experiences, needs and strategies to cope with conflicts. Through this, they can make their voices heard and find echo in other communities. Voces Comunes, being a network in itself, understands networking as a suitable and desirable outcome towards the strengthening of local and global relationships.

Due to our focus on the youth of ethnical minorities, Voces Comunes support community objectives related with their youth as: A) The participants of the project in each community strengthens their role and commitment within, they become the voices of their communities. B) The partincipants find the importance of communication as a motor for expressing their realities and as a tool for preserving their culture and surviving the challenges they face. C) In zones of violence, armed conflict and paramilitarism, the young participants of Voces Comunes have a new and different life option. D) Using the knowledge in communication acquired in the workshops, they can have an additional source of economical income. E) The young participants assume a new roll within their communities: they become the teachers in the communication for the generations that follows.

Voces Comunes has a website in which disseminates the contents produce by the communities and encourage the visibility, social inclusion, free expressions and interactions of each one. It allows communities participating in the project to share their content and find out what others have produced. In this website they will make evident problems they have in common, at the same time that they will identify successful conflict resolution strategies to reproduce. Our goal through this website is to consolidate a network in which the communities that are part of the project can post and share their own content and see the productions that others communities made. A place where they can comment, learn from each other experiences and share them with the world. With Voces Comunes, the indigenous and afro-descendent communities of the region will take advantage of Internet to be visible, heard, known and included.

The final version of our website (www.vocescomunes.com) will be online in two weeks, meanwhile please watch our videos: https://vimeo.com/user25657508 https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQ_Xy3WCI0mWBJlntbgaa3g/videos

Teachers from around Europe are invited on a yearly base to participate in this project. The project encourages students to learn the English language and helps portray the importance of a universal language.
The project can act as a bridge from grammar into the spoken word
Bringing schools and the subjects together is paramount to progress in helping maintain peace for future generation in a vastly changing world. One of the main objectives within the murals project is to promote peace within understanding.
By understanding other cultures we also understand ourselves better.
In this life nowhere do our ideals meet the actual more truly than in how we relate to each other, in how we make, sustain and are friends.
As the world is becoming more and more global and we coexist on a more global level we can’t just think there’s only one right way of living or that any one is valid. The need for coexistence makes the coexistence of cultures and beliefs necessary. In order to not make such mistakes, the best thing we can do is get to know other cultures, while also getting to know our own.
This is exactly what the murals project sets out to archive
The things that we share in our world are far more valuable than those which divide us.
This project helps students to develop different skills : improve the teaching and learning of the English language; increase the use of ICT; improve the relationships and the knowledge among schools and cultural backgrounds in Europe; develop the main competencies though different activities: Treatment of information and Digital competence, Linguistic Communicative competence, Knowledge and interaction, citizenship, Cultural and Artistic competencies, Autonomy and personal initiative competence.
Students can show and increase their creativity while they create the murals, write short texts or produce different works (PowerPoint /prezi presentations, short videos and blog entries). Most of the works are produced in English and Visual Education Lessons, but they include contents of other subjects such as sciences, geography, history, music and citizenship in cooperation with the school library teams.
The idea of creating murals and short texts to accompany the murals as explanations is deeply based on cooperative work. The founding school Elizabeth gave the partners all the necessary instructions and guidelines to participate in the project, so that the participant teachers and students could work together and at their own rhythms/ pace, in order to develop the items and main subjects chosen .Students worked in groups to create the murals. Throughout the project ideas and suggestions are exchanged between the participant teachers on the net (the project continues to grow in numbers and ideas every year.)
Each participant school was free to use the software/ ICT tools teachers and students considered most suitable to achieve the aims of the project, in order to enhance the production of the murals and as a way to show their art works, on the website. On the twin space students can also learn about other web 2.0 tools that their partners have selected to show their murals (for instance photo puzzle, photo decorator, photo Peach. Voki, glogster, BlogSpot, Word Press, among others). Lousã team worked on prezi, PowerPoint, Photo peach, Movie maker, Microsoft auto collage etc. Creativity can be shown and developed while students produce the murals, write messages and short articles and create presentations for the twin space and blog.
..see more in the attachment

The idea was born we have realised that ICT plays an important role in youth, especially girls and young women in facilitating community engagement with civil society; technology inspires to maximize the full potential and positive establishment connections with the communities.
“Technology has become the driving force of change in the modern world. It has altered our economic structures and ways we communicate”. – Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
Access to knowledge has become an effective force for transforming social, economic and political life globally. Thousands of girls leave schools with the hope of developing a career and sustainable life that often turns into a daydream.
ICT literacy plays a vital role in the growth and development of any nation, and research has shown that the higher the rate of ICT literacy, the better the potential to succeed. A high level of ICT literacy can reduce poverty and crime, contribute to economic growth, and improve the quality of life because people, when they can read information regarding HIV/Aids and other social issues, are able to make informed choices and feel more confident about them-selves.
With an HIV prevalence rate of 16.6 per cent amongst South Africans aged between 15 – 49 years, South Africa has the largest HIV epidemic in the world.
It is estimated that 316 900 adult South Africans and 63 600 South African children were newly infected with HIV during 2011. This equates to an incidence of 1042 new HIV infections per day.
National mortality has strikingly increased by more than 86 per cent between 1997 and 2011 and HIV has been a significant contributor.
By 2011, the country had an estimated 2.01 million orphaned children as a result of AIDS. The integration of HIV/AIDS awareness into ICT literacy skills training is an innovative method that attracts girls and women, it’s motivates them to continue participating in the project now and beyond.