Projects

Short Description:

Overall goal

The project aims to promote employment and entrepreneurship among young people, particularly women in rural, urban and peri-urban areas of the Boromo-Bobo-Banfora corridor in the south-west of Burkina Faso.

Expected results

The "life project" approach is at the heart of the "Baara" project's youth support strategy. It allows the partner to support young people in defining their vision and professional project based on an assessment of their professional and personal skills as well as an analysis of the realities of their environment and their professional environment.

Within the framework of this project, HELVETAS favors the reinforcement of local actors allowing them to ensure their roles and responsibilities, to empower them and to perpetuate their relations and collaboration.

Target group / Beneficiaries

The support project for the promotion of employment and entrepreneurship of young people, particularly women, called the "Baara" project, which means "employment" in the Dioula language, is being implemented in western Burkina Faso along the Boromo- Bobo-Banfora corridor by HELVETAS Swiss Intercooperation. According to the Ministry in charge of Youth in Burkina Faso, a young person is anyone between the ages of 15 and 35. Based on this definition, Helvetas is targeting 2,000 young men and women between the ages of 15 and 35 (60% of whom are women) who are unqualified, out of school and not employed or underemployed. This choice is also based on the assumption that the schooling of young people up to the age of 15 is part of the objectives of universal schooling and basic education, the duration of which is estimated at nine years from the start of the preparatory course, which takes place at the age of six or seven.

Activities

The interventions will take place according to the priorities of the target groups and the following sequences:

Life project development: with local service providers specialized in "life project", each youth will be able to have his or her own life project (professional aspiration project);

Vocational training: the capacity building of the youth will be done by the Local Service Providers who are formed and strengthened by the project for this purpose. Helvetas has training in management/entrepreneurship and technical training on professions. The technical trainings on the professions will be mainly oriented on practical cases and post-training coaching;

Entrepreneurial insertion: Local service providers will accompany the youth in their entrepreneurial insertion process in the market systems. Also, co-investments are planned in order to accompany the economic activities of young people in a sustainable way;

Consultation and improvement of the framework conditions: with the awareness and the spirit of empowerment developed thanks to the project, the beneficiaries will be able to organize themselves these frameworks of exchange in collaboration with the local authorities to remove the bottlenecks which slow down the access to vocational training, youth entrepreneurship and access to financing.

Context

Burkina Faso has 20.5 million inhabitants, 77.9% of whom are under 35 years of age. The main characteristics of this population, 51.7% of whom are women, are its youth (45.3% are under 15 years old and 77.9% are under 35 years old) and its rurality (73.7% of the population lives in rural areas). The country's low-income economy is based on agriculture (80% of the working population) and the state has virtually no money to guarantee basic services or for investments. Young people face additional challenges: only 4.5% of the population aged 16-64 has benefited from technical and vocational education and training (TVET) and 95.5% of those employed are primarily in the informal sector.

Employment in urban areas is predominantly informal and is growing rapidly, absorbing more than 12% of the country's active population and 70% of the urban active population. The private sector (SMEs) remains underdeveloped and unstructured, although it is recognized as an essential engine of growth.

In addition, youth also face socio-cultural constraints characterized by a lack of entrepreneurial culture, insufficient business experience and job search skills as well as a lack of family and community support for entrepreneurship and job search initiatives.

Given the very difficult security context, there are increasing numbers of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) with enormous constraints.

The experiences gained from previous projects conducted by HELVETAS and the various lessons learned, confirm the need to make the training-integration system more flexible and closer to the youth and their realities on the one hand, and to the market and private sector opportunities on the other.