livelihoods Projects
This project seeks to directly enhance the livelihoods of refugees, asylum seekers and host community individuals by ensuring they gain market relevant technical skills and support services towards self-reliance and economic inclusion; whilst targeting inclusion of the youth through value chain activities. This component will target 2,500 out of school youth with entrepreneurial and technical life skills in the digital space that should see them explore sustainable livelihood opportunities with Digital Literacy, One hour of code, ICDL and Google online market curriculums. All this will be augmented through operations and logistics activities and support to ensure that livelihoods are indeed improved and protection needs met of the approximately 500,000 population coverage in Kakuma and Kalobeyei.
Over the years, and with a lot of progress made in ensuring entrepreneurs from these communities gain the necessary skills to earn a living, there still exists an oportunity to develop capacity through market development related activities. These are aimed at ensuring that the value chain actors are adequately equipped to develop the demand and supply aspects – with agency support – towards strengthening of core services within an effective regulatory framework. This approach is in tandem with strategies towards market systems that are more inclusive of displacement affected populations and provides the best chance in integrating the humanitrian development and private sector nexus for resillient and sustainable livelihoods.
Kakuma Refugee Camp has been host to refugeees and asylum seekers for close to three decades and, with no improvement in conditions in the home countries for a majority of them, Kalobeyei Integrated Settlement exists to provide a solution that encourages integration with the host community. Population trends and statistics show that there is a growing youth population, not only from new arrivals but also born in the camp, that requires the necessary support to earn a living. Targeting this majority will contribute greatly to a better future for the affected commnities irrespective of location. In 2022, DBK will collaboratively work with AAHI to ensure that refugees and host community PoCs, including the youth, gain market relevant technical skills and support services towards self-reliance and economic inclusion.
Under Livelihood projects the following are the programs:-
In continuing with core activities, and through a cohort based approach, the project will seek to provide start-ups and existing MSMEs with relevant and tailored coaching content that will see the incubation and refining of concrete and innovative ideas for execution. Business acceleration coaching services will be offered to existing businesses to enable them develop strategies within their business plans that would enable them attract investments. The following indicators will guide the project implementation:
- of businesses with concrete business ideas through GYBI training and coaching
- of businesses with fundable/viable business plans through SYB training and coaching
- of businesses that record improved business performance/growth through IYB training and
coaching
The project will continue offering digital training in both basic and intermediate categories for different target youth. Basic digital skills will target youth in schools through facilitating access to Microsoft Digital Literacy as well as the Hour of Code (Blocked-based Programming) that has seen over 5,000 youth gain basic digital skills. A more advanced course including ICDL or NITA will target out of school youth
enabling them to explore sustainable livelihoods activities in the digital space. The online marketing course will enable the youth develop skills that will enable them reach local and global audiences in a creative way to make a living. Entrepreneurship training and coaching will ensure they develop relevant skills to concretize business ideas and develop fundable business plans. This will all be tracked through the following indicators:
- of youth facilitated on Digital Literacy
- online marketing skills.
- of youth trained and coached on business idea generation(GYBI) and starting a business (SYB).