TARGET GROUP
3. TARGET GROUPS AND KEY APPROACHES 3.1 OUR CORE TARGET GROUP
SOCIAL EMPOWERMENT
Youth according to the national youth policy of Ghana in line with the African Union (AU), are persons between the ages of 15 and 35. But for this strategy and statistical purposes of monitoring, evaluation and impact assessment, YEFL-GHANA primarily will work with existing youth groups as well as individuals with special focus on vulnerable and/or unemployed youth that have potential to influence public discourse, improve their wellbeing and can demonstrate their interest and commitment to engaging duty bearers and institutions in constructive dialogue.
With this concept the youth are empowered using, through a learning by doing approach, networking, peer to peer learning and youthled mobilization on issues. The target groups for social mobilization are literate and non-literate youth, who are mobilized and trained to strengthen their capacities and governance structure to advocate for community development and participate in decision making at various levels in the society within and beyond. Key to this approach is the Youth Center Concept (See section 4.1), that are platforms for youth organization and mobilization.
Our secondary target are young people between the ages of 26 and 35 and children and adolescents who are between the ages of 10 – 19 according to the UN on one hand and children who are under 18 according to the UN convention on the rights of the child on the other .
POLITICAL EMPOWERMENT
3.2 YOUTH EMPOWERMENT KEY APPROACHES Youth Empowerment GOAL
Overall, our empowerment process will result in a critical mass of young people who are active citizens with leadership and networks demanding their rights and interest, creating enterprises and participating in decision– making processes. The key areas of priority have been influenced by the three broad empowerment approaches of economic, social and political strategies employed by YEFL-GHANA to deliver our program/ projects.
It has the objective of nurturing young people to have leadership capacity to take on leadership positions and participate in democratic processes at all levels. Furthermore, the youth are empowered to demand accountability from duty bearers as exhibiting young people’s civic responsibility to self and society are key in politically empowering youth.
ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT
Our goal is to develop supportive, sustainable and successful rural social enterprises to promote a one-stop entrepreneurship program by building capacities, creating economic opportunities and creating an enabling environment to inspire youth in rural and underserved communities to startup businesses through the provisioning of entrepreneurial skills development, business mentoring and advisory, networking, and marketing support services. Already, there exist some spaces that foster innovation and entrepreneurship in the country, but these spaces do not reach a large number
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