With support from Caritas Switzerland, Advance Afrika piloted the YouthEntrepreneurship Enhancement Project (YEEP) in 2014 aimed at improving the livelihoods of vulnerable youth in northern Uganda through entrepreneurship skills development. The project responded to the increasing lack of alternatives to sustainable livelihoods faced by many young people who grew up in internally displaced people’s (IDP) camps and did not have a chance to attain formal education, consequently lacking employable skills and the skills required to start their own income-generating activities – hence their vulnerability. Owing to a lack of alternative sources of livelihood, the youth get involved in crime and violence and end up in prison. Even after serving their jail sentence, the youth return to even worse conditions, and the cycle is repetitive.

The YEEP project was piloted in Lango and Acholi sub-regions, and targeted prison inmates and vulnerable youth (ex-convicts) aged 18-35. It included the training of the prison social workers in the sub-regions as trainers who thereafter trained those inmates who were about to complete their jail terms. When these youth return to their communities, Advance Afrika continued to support them in starting up enterprises to generate income.