YIDA

About Us

YIDA Youth Initiative is a refugee-led, youth-led, and community-based Organization formed by the youth refugees in Kyaka II refugee camp to provide Quality –holistic Integrated Early childhood development (IECD) services, to create an enabling environment for improved learning outcomes among children in Kyaka II and improve livelihoods through financial inclusion and literacy to Create jobs in the refugees and non-refugees, to live a sustainable life. [Entrepreneurship training]To ensure the sustainability of the program and business growth; successful trainees can employ others and are connected to other programs related to entrepreneurship globally, like Anzisha, Western Union fellowships, and within-the-organization programs like YIDA Financial Services to acquire soft loans. The youths who benefited from the program work in carpentry, mobile money, farming, bird keeping, small-scale trading, education, textile, and transportation.

Annual Operating Budget: 1,120,127 USD

Annual Beneficiary Reach: 250,000

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Our Partnerships

Our Current Funding Partners

COHERE Master Card foundation ALA4 Education Change For Humanity Anonymous Ubongo International ADRA Slovakia

Previous Funding Partners

UNHCR COTEA Anzisha/ ALA Global youth empowerment fund Right to play/UNICEF

Our Network Affiliations

YUNUS and YOUTH Anzisha fellow

Optional Support Partner

Cohere

Support Partners can play an optional role bridging various gaps between RLOs and their supporters around the world.

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Additional Information

Our Community and Beneficiaries

Kyaka II refugee settlement is found in the South-west of Uganda, in Kyegegwa District. Kyaka II settlement is a home to over 124,030 refugees from countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Rwanda, Kenya, South Sudan, Ethiopia and Sudan. It seats in three sub-counties of Kyegegwa, Mpara, and Ruyonza, and is located approximately 9 miles off the main road of Kampala-Fort portal. Notably, 78% of the whole refugee population here are women and children whereas 30% are youths. The challenges faced by this community includes but not limited to lack of agricultural land, lack of employment and lack of access to pre-primary and secondary education services, Around 72% of the households are without a source of income as reported by Reach Uganda in 2019. This is why after consultation and community led discussions, we decided to begin a voluntary pre-primary and primary education initiative to provide education to refugee children who otherwise wouldn't have gotten any other opportunity to access school. Our initiative is flexible and we use whatever resource we have. For example, our initial classes were conducted under trees and in home compounds. All this is made possible by our 'foot soldier' volunteer teachers. Since 2014, Our education beneficiaries have increased form 55 annually to 1026, and from one to three of the 9 zones in Kyaka II settlement, even amongst the very limited resources. Our activities are also not limited to education for children. We also seek to uplift the livelihoods of our refugee youths who are out of school through giving them vocational skills that improve their chances of living fulfilled lives. In this regard, since 2014, and amidst very limited resources, we have so far trained 75 youths with entrepreneurial leadership skills and supported 38 to start and scale their businesses with soft loans or grants, thanks to support from our international Partners like UNHCR, MasterCard Foundation and COTEA. The demand for education and livelihood opportunites is overwhelming in Kyaka II refugee settlement but with courage, love, intergrity and working together, we believe we can contribute to restoring faith, hope and dreams among our people.

Other Operating Locations

Kyegegwa District, Kyaka II Refugee Settlement

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