Entrepreneurship Skills Program

The Entrepreneurship Skills Program is central to all key program areas and was specifically established to promote and integrate key success skills along the education and learning chain.

The program works with different facilitators and stakeholders who use a facilitation approach that encourages creativity, innovation, critical and analytical thinking. A practical and learner driven methodology is used to include brainstorming, role plays, activities, role models and mentoring, study tours and exchange visits.

The holistic approach embedded into the program promotes value addition to acquired skills and brings the world of work into the classroom or community learning centers.

Objective

The General objective of the ESP program is to nurture a new generation of business and social entrepreneurs who are change agents and change makers within their communities and the country at large.

Youth Entrepreneurs Program

The Network accomplishes its mission by initiating, supporting and monitoring Young Entrepreneur Programs (YEP!) in public and private secondary schools in Uganda. The YEP! model was created for both boys and girls specifically to meet the unique educational, cultural and economic needs of Uganda, while simultaneously offering a fun, engaging, effective way for youth to learn the skills they need for future success.

Entrepreneurship for Adolescent Girls and Women

The Entrepreneurship program for adolescent girls and women is a specific model created to meet the needs of adolescent young girls and women in vulnerable environments. The programs reaches out to young girls out of school, girls from very poor homes, girl headed families, sex workers in the slums or town centre's, juvenile offenders in prisons and remand homes. The focus is to economically empower these young women to be productive to themselves and communities, and be better citizens of Uganda.

Teacher Training and Peer Educators for Entrepreneurship Skills

The Network works hand in hand with teachers in schools to mobilize, facilitate, and implement the programs. In an effort to promote entrepreneurial teaching and learning in schools, PEDN training all participating teachers in the concept and methodology.

Peer to Peer Training

PEDN trains interested young people who have desire to facilitate change within their communities by being facilitators and mentors to fellow youth. This encourages youth participation and implementation of the program and promotes sustainability in the long run.

Community Outreach Programs

The community outreach program has the following projects:

The Whole-Some Youth Project
The "Whole-some Youth Project" is a local collaboration of 4 Ashoka fellows (social entrepreneurs) in Uganda. The project is aimed at empowering peer educators in Wakiso District in a "holistic" manner - getting skills in entrepreneurship and business skills development, basic legal skills, vocational skills, and reproductive health. Fellows are collaborating by imparting their unique ideas and models to 200 peer educators.

The objective is to create a mass of knowledgeable community peer educators who are useful to the communities they live in. The peer educators support the roll-out of the Whole-some model and act as liaison officers at community level.
Another Life Project
Another Life Project is aimed at improving the livelihood of highly impoverished and marginalized communities through guidance and counseling support. The target group are vulnerable communities and victims of the civil war in Northern Uganda who fled to Kampala.

The main objective is to give these poor and desperate communities "Another Life" - a new and better life, and better socio-economic conditions. They are prepared to become role-models for their folks back in the camps or villages.

Vocational Skills Program

The vocational skills programs targets beneficiaries who have a passion, talent and interested in taking on a vocational skill like crafts making, brick making, tailoring, baking or any other trade. The objective is support individual interests as a way of generating personal income and supporting their families. The program is very popular with out of school children, youth and women.