Our Thematic Areas
Each area hands over to the next: we identify and prepare young people, place them into training, connect that training to real market demand, and use the resulting evidence to open more doors.
We identify out-of-school, unemployed young people, prepare them, and place them into technical and vocational training then keep them in it through to recognised certification (DIT / UVQF). We cover the practical barriers that cause dropout: transport, upkeep, tools and childcare. Our measure is completion and certification, never enrolment.
Where a certificate becomes an income. Job placement, apprenticeships, start-up toolkits, savings groups and business fundamentals delivered to young people who have completed their training, so that tools and capital reach hands that know how to use them.
The demand side of the equation. We build relationships with employers, contractors, traders, mining operators and government programmes so that we train young people for work that actually exists. For young men from pastoral backgrounds this means building on knowledge they already hold — livestock value chains, animal health, hides and skins, meat and dairy — alongside construction, welding, solar installation and mechanics.
We generate youth employment evidence from Karamoja and use it to influence district budgets and national skilling policy, so that training institutions and government livelihood programmes genuinely serve Karamojong young people. This work stays focused on skilling and youth employment — it is how we widen our core mandate, not how we depart from it.
How a SEYIK Cohort Works
In our current phase we place young people into training capacity that already exists in Karamoja rather than building our own — because the binding constraint is not the shortage of training places, it is that nobody is doing the finding, preparing, placing and above all the retaining.
Community-based selection with local councils, elders, women’s groups and youth structures, against published criteria. Cohorts are mixed across clans and across the raider and raid-affected divide.
Pre-training orientation covering literacy and numeracy readiness, work discipline, safeguarding briefing and informed consent.
Enrolment into partner technical institutes, skilling hubs and vocational providers, matched to trades identified through employer engagement.
Transport, upkeep, tools, childcare and case follow-up throughout the training period. This is where most programmes lose their participants, and where we concentrate our effort.
Assessment and certification through the Directorate of Industrial Training and the Uganda Vocational Qualifications Framework, so that the qualification is portable and recognised.
Job placement, apprenticeship or supported self-employment, with start-up tools and savings group membership.
Structured follow-up at three, six and twelve months, recording employment status and income. Results are published, including where they disappoint.
Our headline indicator is the proportion of participants earning a verified income twelve months after training. Supporting indicators are completion and certification rate; median monthly earnings at six and twelve months; placement rate within three months of certification; and retention among young mothers, disaggregated.
We report outcomes, not attendance. Where our data is self-reported or community-verified rather than independently measured, we state so.
