Story by Fairstars Mukungurutse
The Campaign for Female Education (CAMFED) has partnered the Ministry of Youth Empowerment, Development, and Vocational Training to foster a supportive environment for youth development.
The move is in line with the government’s vision to achieve an upper-middle-income economy by 2030.
The memorandum of understanding signed by the Ministry Of Youth Empowerment, Development and Vocational Training with the Campaign for Female Education (Camfed) seeks to enhance educational and economic opportunities for young women from marginalized areas through training and mentorship programmes.
CAMFED Zimbabwe Co-national Director, Mrs Justina Hama said, “This partnership will mainly be focusing on girls that are out of school, who have finished school and now want to venture into different pathways. So, we have girls that want to become entrepreneurs, we have girls who want to go the formal route. Right now, our CAMA network has just around 85 000 girls. So, we are targeting as many girls as possible that can benefit from this partnership. The partnership is going to improve the capacity of our young women in terms of running their businesses, increase their income and improve livelihoods.”
Youth Empowerment, Development and Vocational Training Permanent Secretary, Mr Solomon Mhlanga underscored the importance of stakeholder support to advance youth development.
“Government on its own cannot deal with issues pertaining to empowering youths on its own. We need that collaboration with partners, and CAMFED is one of them, so that we can be able to ensure that our youths contribute to moving this country to an upper-middle income level, that level which has already been benchmarked by His Excellency, the President. The youth demographic dividend which we have in this country… we need to structure ourselves as government and partners to ensure that each and every youth in Zimbabwe contributes to that development, and what that means literally is that we have to empower the youths so that they can have meaningful programMEs, meaningful projects, meaningful employment.”
Government is driving various initiatives to empower youths, fostering self-sufficiency and enabling them to make meaningful contributions to national development.
The programmes focus on promoting youth development, vocational training, and economic empowerment, ultimately aiming to equip young people with the skills and knowledge necessary to thrive and drive positive change in their communities.
