YouthReconnect

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Inspiration

Uganda has the highest level of youth unemployment in Africa. Of the 700,000 youth that complete formal education and join the job market every year, only 17% find something to do hence 83% of Ugandan graduates cannot find jobs. In addition, a number of people will lose their jobs after COVID-19 pandemic since the financial burden will necessitate a number of companies to reduce the number of expenses. Not only the educated people but even a number of casual workers will lose their jobs. Furthermore, a lot of Ugandans have been involved in Electronics and Textile Business with the highest importations coming from China. After the COVID-19 pandemic, a lot of this type of business will not boom as it was previously doing. Again despite the fact that the lockdown is being uplifted, some guidelines like public cars to always carry half of the full capacity will limit business prosperity. This means that the youth not only in Uganda need to get digitally connected and execute tasks/ business as teams.

What it does

YouthReconnect is an Intelligent Digital Platform to Empower Youth after COVID-19 lockdowns with access to potential employers, business partners, tailored training, and form innovation hubs to solve the challenges in their own communities. YouthReconnect specifically performs 4 major functions.

Job finding – The platform helps the youth find job opportunities. These job opportunities could be permanent or temporary job hiring’s which could be professional or casual jobs like looking for a freelance programmer for 1 month, looking for a compound designer for 1 day.
Business Partnerships – It’s time for the youth to stop setting up un necessary business competitions. The platform will empower those seeking to join others to form business partnerships like identifying a potential supplier in China (abroad) and buy goods in one shipment, whilst sending one representative, coming together to bid for bigger government or private contracts, forming saving groups like SACCOs or cooperatives and have shared access to financial support. The platform will also help local suppliers get connected to potential suppliers or contacts in other countries.
Training and Mentorships – Provide technical and soft skills to the youth to increase their level of employability or self-made entrepreneurs. The platform also links the youth to some mentors from within the community for one to one mentorship sessions.
Innovations – Lastly the platform provides an innovative Digital Hub, where the youth are provided skills to how to change their social challenges into opportunities, and how they can access funds through grants writing.

How I built it

YouthReconnect has been developed using a design thinking approach where the end users are part and central to the design process. After developing the framework of which we have validated with the potential end-user, we have now embarked on implementing the platform using the Django framework.

Challenges I ran into

The project seemed simple and small in the initial phase. However, on starting the developing of the project, it has actually seemed to be more broad with a number of stakeholders that we did not anticipate. The project also needs maximum publicity so that the youth can know more about it.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

We are so happy that the platform has received positive feedback from the potential end users. We have validated our framework and embarked on developing the platform.

What I learned

The problem of unemployment in Uganda is going to be far beyond what even the authorities expect. We need to empower the youth to be innovative and turn these challenges into opportunities. We also need to embrace the power of team work.