In an effort to support the government efforts of skilling the youth in creating employment opportunities especially in the informal sector, the Rotary Club of Soroti Central together with Soroti Youth Development Initiative (SOYODI) have joined hands to start training the youth in the Sub Counties of Asuret, Arapai and Aukot on life skills.
According to Suzan Rose Kituyi of Rotary Club of Soroti, the program when implement will aim at reducing high levels of unemployment among the Youths.
“We aim at training and empowering the Youth with skills especially those that didn’t get a chance to complete studies and cannot find white collar jobs. We shall train and give them tailoring machines to help them,” said Kituyi.
She added, the Rotary will be implementing the project together with SOYODI and Soroti District local government.
“We are doing this because this is one of the campaign being undertaken by government to skill youth in job creation and this brings in money quickly than spending much of the time looking for the jobs”
Denis Francis Ajaru, a Rotarian and the Executive Director of SOYODI highlighted that, “At the moment we are finalizing with the paper work of the grant application which will be submitted to the our District committee, our partners from the rotary club of Corning are now taking pledges. We thank our partners rotary clubs for this wonderful intervention.”
“The mindset of most youth is still limited to looking for white collar jobs which they cannot get. We think that there should be a prototype shift among the Youth on how they view things” said Ajaru.
He also added that over 100 youths are going to be trained in the three Sub Counties with the hope of extending the project to the other districts of Serere and Katakwi.
“We thank in a special way Rtn Deacon Ray Defendorf and all the Rotarian’s in the world for the work well done.”
Chris Ogulei the Aukot Sub County LCIII hopes that the training will help eliminate idleness, Child marriages, teenage pregnancies and theft orchestrated by the youth.
Ronnie Ikara who represented the District Community Development Officer asked the politicians to engage the youth in joining this training opportunity noting that leading the poor community is very disastrous.
Ikara also pledged total commitment from the district in monitoring the implementation of the project.
According to the project aim, they hope that there shall be a reduction in crime rate, drug and substance abuse with the youth’s active utilization of their time.
The youth shall be equipped with tailoring and knitting skills to make them self-reliant and independent. The youth will also use the machines to make attires for sale, before they get jobs or start their own businesses.