Rwanda: Promoting Youth Entrepreneurship through Vocational Training

Rwanda: Promoting Youth Entrepreneurship through Technical and Vocational Education and Training

This story originally appeared in the Rwanda Focus.
The Ministry of Education and Global Communities are carrying out an awareness campaign to promote Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) for youth entrepreneurship and life skills development across the country. The 3-month communication campaign is run under the slogan “TVET Umwugawanjye, ubuzimabwiza” or “TVET My career, My future.”
“This campaign aims at helping the youth to gain employable skills that can earn them a living and support their families,” says Victor Mugarura, the communications and outreach manager at Global Communities.
Global Communities aims at expanding opportunities for youth across Rwanda and organizes one-year technical and vocational training programs. The organization intervenes in ongoing activities for career development.
Mugarura adds that over 2,600 youth have been trained in different vocations and this year, support will be given to 3,000 youths.
For the campaign to be successful, the community and parents have been involved to encourage and support youth to participate in TVET. The awareness campaign is in line with the government’s vision to reduce poverty in the country with the contribution of the education sector.
Among the priority sectors of the Economic Development and Poverty Reduction Strategy (EDPRS) is to increase and strengthen TVET through promoting the social structure that links the content of education to the needs of the labor market.
“The government’s vision is expressed in the EDPRS targets to enhance the youth participation in TVET for economic and social development and this is why we encourage harmonization of intervention with the development partners like Mineduc, the Workforce Development Authority (WDA) and others,” Mugarura says.
He adds that they are encouraging youth to use interpersonal communication during the awareness campaign. And the 2600 trained youth are encouraged to act as models for other youth to join TVET.
The State Minister in charge of TVET, Albert Nsengiyumva, says that this campaign is vital in sensitizing Rwandans on TVET and delivering a key message that links skills, job and better living conditions. He believes that this will help to harmonize interventions and create more interactions as they invest in skills delivery.
He recommends that Global Communities, the WDA, and other TVET stakeholders harmonize their actions together in order to empower Rwandan youth to take part in improving their own futures.
To align the action with the ministry’s objectives, Global Communities has also organized a Career and Life Management (CALM) retreat where certificates will be given to TVET Graduates. And the four-day event will educate, engage and empower 250 youth with life skills to help them enter the workforce and be able to compete in the job market.