UGANDA: Caritas Uganda Holds Aquaculture Workshop As Strategy to Combat Youth Unemployment
In a bid to equip the youth in Northern Uganda with livelihood skills and to promote self-employment opportunities, Caritas Uganda held a workshop on Building Skills in Aquaculture.
The workshop which was held in the Archdiocese of Gulu on 25th October, 2018, was organized by Caritas Uganda in collaboration with Caritas Norway, and the Norwegian aquaculture company, Hauge Aqua through Caritas Gulu.
Over 40 participants including the Resident District Commissioner of districts under Gulu Archdiocese, Chief Administrative Officers, Local Council 5 chairpersons, District Fisheries Officers, Board of Governors of Caritas Gulu, Aquaculture Project staff in Uganda and Caritas Uganda staffs were in attendance.
In her remarks, the Program Coordinator of Caritas Uganda Helen Chanikare said that the main objective of the workshop was to give more prominence to youth entrepreneurship and sustain awareness on employment opportunities as a means to combating youth unemployment and under-employment in the region.
“Today, the youth form the bigger percentage of our population but they are suffering because they are not fully engaged in determining their own destiny. Young people, when employed, represent a tremendous resource for the holistic development of the country; they bring energy, creativity, and imagination to many nation-building tasks. Our resolve is to make them key players in all aspects of life by giving them self-employment skills,” she said.
She added that Caritas Uganda will remain committed to contributing its part to assisting Government in resolving the unemployment challenge by embarking on initiatives that enable the youth to become self-reliant.
Chanikare also noted that the youth needed meaningful occupations and employment in order to build stable and sustainable communities.
During the workshop, the need for creating decent jobs through Government support to the informal sector was highlighted as fundamental, with participants noting that employment was key to economic and social development. It was stated that providing young people with job opportunities was a major challenge in the country, especially among the youth, irrespective of their levels of education.
In that regard, stakeholders including the Government were urged to integrate the uneducated unemployed youth into the labour market through apprenticeship programmes, agriculture and aquaculture trainings, among others.
∽End∽
By Jacinta W. Odongo, Media Officer, Uganda Episcopal Conference
