Project duration: August 2017 – August 2019
Project location: Zilakoma (Nkhatabay), Malawi
To address the issues of unemployment among youth Help a Child introduces the YACSMART project: Youth Active in Climate Smart Agriculture. This program is an economic empowerment program focusing on youth, initiated by Help a Child Malawi and implemented in partnership with National Association of Smallholder farmers (NASFAM) and Livingstonia Synod Aids Program (LISAP). The main goal: Youths (18-35) are economically empowered through increased incomes, acquired entrepreneurship skills and access to quality Sexual Reproductive Health services. In the pilot, 130 youth were targeted to participate in groundnut and rice production and expected to benefit from increased access to quality sexual reproductive health.
Pilot main results
- The majority of the respondents (95.2 %) is involved in some form of employment compared to 85.9 % at baseline.
- The average net profit of youth greatly improved from MK 30,755 (37.28 EUR) at baseline to MK 110,687 (134.15 EUR).
- Illustrative for the impact of the program is the increase of mobile phone purchases: 70,6% of respondents owned a mobile phone at the end of the project, compared to 45.9 % reported at baseline.
- Almost all respondents (99.2%) became a member of a community structure, compared to 31.8% at baseline, meaning that the majority of project participants can now be directly involved in activities and social services such as SRH. Since no organization had worked before in the area on organizing youth into clubs, it can be stated that YACSMART has successfully set a foundation for knowledge sharing and encouragement.
- More youth accessed family planning services (increase from 42.9% to 74.6%).