A ray of hope has fallen on the young generation of Soroti district as projects initiated by the National Female Youth MP, Anna Adeke Ebaju begin to yield results.
A total of 111 youth ns Soroti district were on Friday 25th October, 2019 awarded with certificates after completing a one- year course in different vocational skills under Adeke Education Foundation programme.
The programme that was initiated last year, saw a number of youth across Gweri sub county enroll for courses which included Tailoring and Cutting Garments, Bricklaying and Concrete Practice, Carpentry and Joinery, Hair dressing among others.
Rev George Robert Okodu of Church of Uganda called upon the beneficiaries to make the best use of the skills the MP fully helped them acquire. He was speaking during the award ceremony at Angopet in Gweri sub county.
Why Adeke Education Foundation
According to the Youth MP, the poverty indices of Teso have become so alarming in that, in the past two years, Teso has been ranked to be growing at a very slow rate with poverty increasing to 41%.
Many reasons account for the poverty that our people face and they range from historical injustices that people suffered, for instance the insurgency that saw the rustling of cattle and total impoverishing of Iteso.
Adeke adds that the clear cut deliberate lack of focus by government to put more emphasis on income generation activities to Teso coupled with infrastructure development has also greatly impacted to the high rates of poverty in the sub region.
She further highlights the other salient agent of poverty as the mind-set of the people themselves also to a large extent accounts for the poverty- many young people under look some jobs.
“What we need to do as people is to focus on improving household incomes so that in time, we can have stronger and more sustainable families whose standards of living is decent and can enable us to comfortably afford the basic needs of life,” said Adeke.
According to her, she is focusing on entrepreneurship as a driver to improving household incomes and it is mainly geared towards women and youth.
Why Women and Youth?
Adeke explains that most of the households are run by women and the other reason is that the youth are the future that Teso belongs to.
“It is in this spirit that I have been encouraging and sponsoring entrepreneurship ideas among women and youth,” explained Adeke.
Story by Noah Omuya(The light)
