Skilling Young Adults is a program embedded in a nonprofit company that I founded in 2013. The company’s called Rounding up the Edges. But for now, skilling young adults is its largest program. In skilling young adults, We want adults to be able to acquire their work skills that they need to transition from being students to being effective employed workers or starting their own business. So we teach how to write a CV, how to write a cover letter, how to sit an interview. Then we also teach the basic rules of work as well as how to start a small business. Alongside this, we teach many life skills so that a young adults have a balance between being able to work, but also having these essential life skills. And this package put together, we believe is going to make a complete young adult who can spring into their future at a very fast speed.

Why do we need this special program independent of what the students can get in there training institutions. We have observed that a lot of the curricular in universities and institutions of higher learning focus on giving students the skills they need as prescribed by their course. So if you are an engineer, they will train you in skills of engineering. If you’re a doctor like me, they will train you in the skills of being a doctor. But once you get out of university or higher institution of learning, you find the real world out there. The real world out there is not the same as the world you enjoying when you a students, first of all, for you to be able to uh, get employed or start your own business, you need the knowhow. And this knowhow is not taught at university. And then the whole aspect of life skills people expect that you jump out of college, you are a young person.

You reach there and all of a sudden you know how to manage your money. You know how to manage your relationships. You know how to communicate you, you know how to, um, uh, to do life. And it’s not like that. We know that many young people, when they come out, they get lost simply because this system, the education system does not prepare them for further beyond their graduation and also farther beyond into living life. So that’s why we think that this gap is what skilling young adults is aiming to fill. It’s not a gap that is small. It’s a very, very big gap.

Who are we targeting with the Skilling Young Adults program? First of all, targeting students at university and now there are so many universities in Uganda, in East Africa and across Africa. So that’s already a very large number of eligible students. So anyone at university or at an institution of higher learning. Then we are also targeting anyone who left these institutions in the past three years, in the three as proceeding their training. And we are also targeting anyone who is between 18 and 30 who for some reason or other doesn’t fall in the previous three, two categories. So the main target is basically between people who are 18 up-to 30 whether they are within institutions or out of these institutions, we target both men and women equally. We don’t distinguish by any of the other characters, religion, Political affiliation or any other affiliations. We target everyone who falls in this description.

The main focus of our courses is twofold. So we have a set of work related causes and these relate to a CV writing, um, cover letter writing, how to prepare and sit for an interview, the rules of work and how to start a business. Then we have another set of life skills where we teach how to manage money, how to manage relationships, communication skills, time management skills, and behavior change skills, and also try to tackle the tough subject of how to balance gender relations both at work and in life. And then we teach also some skills for self-knowledge and self-assessment so that people can actually know what they are good at and maybe what they struggle on. So this package of work and life skills is what we offer to our participants or to young people who come to us.

Who is Dr. Jane? I am a medical doctor. And for over 40 years I spent my time, uh, in their research career in Uganda. I spent many years in WHO in Geneva. I spent some time working with the Welcome Trust in United Kingdom. And after that, why the experience? I returned back home in 2012 I returned still with a research job, but I knew this research job was ending in five to six years. So I already started planning for how I could still be very useful and impactful, uh, especially back home and in Uganda, but also in Africa. And that’s how I started to found Skilling Young Adults. Uh, so what is Skilling young adults? Yeah, so skilling young adults is a big training program support program for young adults. It’s embedded in a much larger nonprofit company, which is rounding up the edges, but scaling younger dotes is at the moment the biggest effort that is being implemented by rounding up the edges. So skilling young adults, the vision is actually to see that every young adult can effectively transition from being a student in university or in a higher institution of learning to a life of work or life of business, so that they can be financially independent, emotionally independent. Also being able to have their own families and carry on with their lives. So we train people in work skills and life skills.