Kenya Youth Empowerment Project

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The development objective of the Youth Empowerment Project is to support the Government of Kenya (GoK) efforts to increase access to youth-targeted temporary employment programs and to improve youth employability. There are three components to the project. The first component of the project is labor-intensive works and social services. This component is to support the GoK in reducing the vulnerability of unemployed young women and men by expanding and enhancing the effectiveness of the Kazi Kwa Vijana (KKV) program. The component finances labor-intensive projects that provide income opportunities to participating youth, and at the same time, enhance the communities' access to social and economic infrastructure. The target group of the component is unemployed youth in the 18-35 age brackets, which is the same bracket of the ongoing KKV. The second component of the project is private sector internships and training. This component is to improve youth employability, by providing youth with work experience and skills through the creation of internships and relevant training in the formal and informal sector. This component is a pilot that addresses the lack of skills and work experience for unemployed young women and men. It will provide youth in the 15-29 age bracket who have at least eight years of schooling, have been out of school for at least a year and are not working with an opportunity to acquire relevant work experience and skills through a private sector internship and training program. The third component of the project is capacity building and policy development. The main objective of this component is to enhance the capacity of the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports (MoYAS) to implement the national youth policy and increase the institutional capacity for youth policy planning. This will be done through activities under the following main areas: (i) training of MoYAS staff, particularly the district youth officers; (ii) communication activities to increase awareness of the project; and (iii) policy development, through the provision of technical assistance to the National Youth Council and youth policy development.