On the 1st of February 2007, the Ministry of Gender and Youth, Sports and Recreation assisted by a joint UN partnership consisting of UNDP, ILO, UNICEF and FAO, launched the project “Youth Employment Promotion towards Poverty Reduction in Lesotho".

Objectives:
The overall objective of the project is to create an enabling national environment for the promotion of youth employment and enterprise development to support poverty reduction initiatives in Lesotho. The project will strengthen the national institutional capacity of the Government of Lesotho to develop a broad based National Action Plan on Youth Employment, in consultation with all the critical stakeholders, including youth organizations, the business community, trade unions and the civil society. Particular emphasis will be given to placing the employment of young women and men in the centre of national and sectoral policies, entrepreneurship development training to enable youth to start and run enterprises to provide more and better jobs. The project will provides a mechanism for establishing strategic linkages between the UN organizations and Government, the youth organizations, private sector businesses, trade unions and the civil society. The project’s target population is defined as youth within the age group of 15-35 years. This would take into account the Government of Lesotho’s definition of youth. The project will initially target three districts within Lesotho, one urban and two rural districts.

Outputs:
- To enhance a conducive national policy frameworks for youth employment development
- To establish an Entrepreneurship Development Programme for training and mentoring young women and men;
1. To assist young women and men in establishing new enterprises in urban and rural areas;
2. To create strategic partnerships and resource mobilization for youth employment.
 

Achievements:
The first component of the project is to enable a policy environment for youth employment. Thus far, in preparation for the completion of the National Action Plan on Youth Employment (NAPYE), all preliminary activities have been completed and the next steps are to finalize the Draft NAPYE, incorporate findings from research and studies, to hold a presentation workshop, and submit the NAPYE to the Cabinet for official adoption. Also, as part of enabling a policy environment for youth employment a National Youth Council is in the process of being set up. The draft bill is currently with the Law Office and UNDP Lesotho hopes to complete this output shortly.

The second component of the project is enterprise development for youth employment, specifically with an entrepreneurship development programme for training and mentoring young women and men. This is an exciting and fruitful aspect of the project as it is moving fluidly and tangible results are apparent. UNDP Lesotho is glad to report that the entrepreneurship, with the preliminary research complete and the instruction to the trainers conducted for the project, is well under way. The training of potential entrepreneurs commenced at the beginning of July, and has successfully created a number of mentoring relationships. As of August 6th, 290 (160 female; 130 male) entrepreneurs have been trained.

The next component of the project is for young women and men to establish new enterprises in urban and rural areas. For this to be possible, the project has adopted a Lesotho Youth Credit Initiative (LYCI) to provide a micro-financing facility to youth who are willing to venture into entrepreneurship.

Lastly, the project aims to set up strategic partnerships and resource mobilization for promoting youth employment. To date, the Small, Micro and Medium Enterprises (SMME) Network, MAMMOTH International, and the Ministry of Employment and Labour have been selected as strategic partners. These institutions will also target other groups outside the projects target population.

Contact:
Ms. Charu Bist
Charu.bist@undp.org