SKILLS YOUTH

SKILLS YOUTH project enables young unemployed refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo(DRC) to acquire digital and life skills through scratch software. 

The clashes between the rebels and the Congolese army pose a serious problem in terms of the management of refugee cases from the provinces bordering Burundi, which means that Burundi is currently receiving many asylum seekers. Among the registered refugees it is mainly women and young people who often arrive in Burundi.

Many actors including Zoya Group are concerned about the young people living in these camps who are not directly integrated into the Burundian education system as it will take a long process to restart their schooling.

As a result, refugee youth find themselves in idle situations, as they are not employed or trained, while youth who have been to school or training have potential employment and income prospects or the labour market, and cannot develop the key skills needed to seize employment opportunities. 

These challenges are observed in the five refugees camps including Kinana in Muyinga, Musasa in Ngozi, Kavumu in Cankuzo, Bwagiriza and Nyankanda in Ruyigi, which means that these young refugees may engage in risky behaviours such as clandestine sex, masturbation, sexual violence, sexual abuse, smoking and alcohol abuse and the related consequences are numerous, including sexually transmitted infections and HIV/AIDS, unwanted pregnancies, cervical cancer, abortions, depression and even maternal and infant mortality.

SKILLS YOUTH is a solution that will allow young refugees to acquire digital skills, to learn programming notions through the Scratch software. This solution will reduce the digital divide between girls and boys by breaking the stereotypical values of our society. It is a digital solution that will facilitate the learning of young people on notions related to new technologies and information that will be available in the USB keys or trainers' machines of Zoya Group.

Indeed, Zoya Group's team will be deployed in the refugee camps targeted by the project to train and accompany the young refugees in programming/coding via the scratch software. During this period, the trainers will organise coding campaigns in all the camps targeted by the project. The sessions will be in two parts: theoretical and practical. The theoretical part consists of giving full information on the functioning of the software as well as providing notes on it.Then there will be practical sessions which will focus mainly on programming/coding with this software. This is a crucial moment as the young refugees will start to get to grips with programming and will demonstrate their creativity by making, for example, different scenarios, facts, animations, games and drawings in their machines under the guidance of the Zoya Group trainers.

SKILLS YOUTH is a solution that will serve the unemployed youth living in the 5 refugee camps (Kinana in Muyinga, Musasa in Ngozi, Kavumu in Cankuzo, Bwagiriza, and Nyankanda in Ruyigi). These young people are forced to break off their education and flee their country of origin because of the clashes between the rebels and the Congolese army. Because of the administrative process, integration into the Burundian education system takes a long time, which can expose these young people to various risk behaviours in their camps.

Zoya Group will propose a technological solution to first mentor the idle refugee youth by equipping them with the necessary digital skills through the Scratch software. This solution will improve the lives of young people in the five refugee camps by providing them with opportunities to learn new technologies and information as a means of preventing and healing the after-effects of war. The project will also contribute to the prevention of risky behaviours that may expose these young people to the serious consequences occurring in their camps.

The project will be implemented in the 5 refugee camps targeted by the project and a total of 2,000 refugee youths, 400 per camp, will benefit from the project's achievements so that they can create income-generating activities in their camps and/or develop applications and other business management software that can be sources of income.

Zoya Group is a network of young experts in digital solutions development. Since 2020 to date, Zoya Group has been entrusted by several companies to conduct their research and development of applications and software. 

In addition, the members of Zoya Group work day in and day out to support public and private companies in the digitalisation of their programmes. Zoya Group is home to a diverse team of girls and boys of all ages capable of working in a complex environment with a multidisciplinary, multisectoral team and different donors.

Also, the coding programme via Scratch software was developed by the Zoya Group team and they will implement it from start to finish. As part of the project, the Scratch coding programme developers will be deployed to the refugee camps with laptops and accessories to deliver the material according to a set schedule.  

In developing this coding programme, the Zoya Group team conducted focus groups in 5 refugee camps (Kinana in Muyinga, Musasa in Ngozi, Kavumu in Cankuzo, Bwagiriza, and Nyankanda in Ruyigi) in order to respond to the real needs of these youth. 

Through these focus groups, the Zoya Group team in collaboration with refugee camp delegates and youth representatives all validated that until the integration of the Burundian education system, these young refugees need occupations to cultivate themselves and develop their intellectual capacity and this helps to prevent and avoid the least risky behaviour that can occur at any time.

These activities can be in the form of entertainment and learning games, personal counselling and other life skills solutions. Zoya Group put together all these recommendations from the focus groups and came up with the idea of developing a coding programme via scratch software to give young people the digital skills they need in their lives. 

In developing this programme, the young people as well as the representatives of the 5 camps were interviewed and gave their views and these were incorporated into the said programme. The beneficiaries of the project will be involved in all stages of the programme such as design, development and implementation. 

SKILLS YOUTH is a software package developed by Zoya Group to help young people living in the five refugees camps to acquire digital skills by practising programming/coding and learning the basics of new information and telecommunication technologies. This solution differs from other approaches used in Burundi because of its functionality. It is a programme that helps young people with limited means who want to learn basic programming and other aspects of new technologies and information. 

It is a very interesting programme for young people because in learning the coding lessons, young people work in their own time with creative and competitive minds. The learners finally find themselves in situations of discovering their talents without knowing it. They go beyond the category of learners and become experts in programming, developers of applications and other business management software.

This project will contribute to the mutation of traditional training towards digital training in Burundi and it will facilitate their learning of complex technological notions via the scratch software. Young people in the camps who have nothing to do will practice developing solutions, different scenarios, applications and software that can act as their means of resilience and adaptation. These young people will demonstrate their creative talents through scratch software and SKILLS YOUTH will contribute to the acceleration of the digital generation in Burundi especially among rural youth.

• 2000 young refugees selected from the 5 refugee camps (Kinana in Muyinga, Musasa in Ngozi, Kavumu in Cankuzo, Bwagiriza and Nyankanda in Ruyigi) were equipped with digital skills and the language of programming through the Scratch software. To achieve this goal, the Zoya Group team of trainers will organise accelerated programming training. On the one hand, in collaboration with the camp delegates, the trainers will go through the functionalities of Scratch. The trainers will therefore give all the information about our software to enlighten the young beneficiaries of the project. Then, practical sessions will continue, the project team will divide the young people into sub-groups. These young people will start coding under the supervision of our trainers.
• The project will set up 20 trained cells of 20 young people living in each of the 5 refugee camps so that they can carry out income-generating activities through public secretariats and other profitable initiatives. These cells will be trained on aspects of financial empowerment. This action will enable the young beneficiaries of the project to be autonomous and will facilitate the sustainability of the project's achievements.
• 40 young peer educators selected from each of the 5 refugee camps will be trained and reinforced on the life skills module. This is a module that contains safe and necessary information in the life of a young person. It has been developed to help young people get personalised advice on how to manage the transition from youth to adulthood. These young peer educators will benefit from this module so that upon their return they can train their peers. This action will be carried out in close collaboration with the delegates of the refugee camps so that they are sensitized and commit themselves to continue to ensure the follow-up and the supervision of these young people. This will ensure that the project's achievements are sustained.

Scratch is a digital solution initiated by Zoya Group to facilitate the learning of young people living in the 5 refugees camps in Burundi to acquire basic notions of new technologies and information by practising the programming language via the scratch software so that they can develop their own digital projects.

Our goal is to equip underserved youth in refugee camps with digital skills to stimulate their creativity and overcome their challenges through the use of Scratch software. This scratch software will be installed in the machines of our trainers and those of Bureaux to facilitate their learning.

The trainers will take the lead to first give the young people all the information related to this coding programme as well as the functionalities related to our Software. After the theoretical session, our trainers' machines will be available for the youth to start practicing programming/coding in order to create different scenarios, games and animations through this scratch software under the guidance/coaching of our trainers.

Our project is a new product, it has been developed to occupy young refugees in the 5 refugee camps (Kinana in Muyinga, Musasa in Ngozi, Kavumu in Cankuzo, Bwagiriza and Nyankanda in Ruyigi) to acquire digital skills while waiting for their integration into the educational system in Burundi.

On the other hand, Zoya Group intends to directly reach two thousand (2000) young people next year, four hundred (400) in each camp targeted by the project. The young people selected will be trained in programming/coding and will be reinforced on all the functionalities of scratch software so that they can train their peers and acquaintances who have not benefited from the project. These young people will become change leaders and are considered peer educators and will be equipped with animation techniques via the scratch software so that they can continue to mentor other young people even after our project ends.

• Although Zoya Group has not earmarked funds for this solution, we expect to work with volunteers to overcome some of the financial barriers to implementation. Furthermore, during implementation, Zoya Group will mobilise funds from stakeholders and donors to avoid this financial risk.
• The project may face technical obstacles as all the young people in the camps want to join our coding programme with a risk of lack of machines and learning facilities. This risk will be low because during the trainings, the trainers will divide the youth into sub-groups and Zoya Group intends to round up the number of trainers by recruiting young volunteers. To address this challenge, Zoya Group will consider training the trainers of the young volunteers and move on to the recruitment process. Each young person recruited must have their own lap-top to facilitate the work.
• The Burundian culture does not encourage girls to learn technological sciences but this risk is low because the Zoya Group team in collaboration with the delegates of the camps targeted by the project intends to organise awareness sessions so that young girls participate massively in our programme and inclusiveness, gender equality will be a priority in the targeting of project beneficiaries.

In developing our project, we intend to collaborate with the local administration and refugee camp managers as well as the government of Burundi through the commission in charge of repatriation and asylum seekers and the ministry of technology and innovation. 

 The project will be carried out according to a six-monthly planning with the elaboration of monthly activity plans as well as the budget and a technical committee for the follow-up of the project will be set up by the partner organisations. The monitoring and evaluation of the evolution of the project activities at the level of Zoya Group and through the supervision missions that will be carried out by the donor.

Organisation of monthly, quarterly and half-yearly supervision and monitoring visits to ensure the quality and performance of the project, supervision missions between the executive committee and representatives of partner organisations in collaboration with the donor's representative, the modalities and regularity of the monitoring and evaluation visits and missions will be defined jointly with all stakeholders. 

The capitalisation of the achievements and the sustainability of the project, a strategy will be developed in order to define the ways and means towards the closure of the project and one of the mechanisms will be to develop and set up frameworks of exchanges with all the stakeholders in this project in order to set up the reporting system of the project and the closure of the project. 

Zoya Group has developed this software to help young refugees who find themselves in helpless situations to have significant digital skills. It aims to contribute to the prevention of risky behaviours that may occur in their location. By giving this opportunity to young people who have broken their school education to learn the basics of new technologies by practising the language of programming through the scratch software. They will be equipped on the different steps of this software so that they can appropriate it further and the Zoya Group team will occupy these young refugees by giving them life skills such as the creation of income generating activities, financial education, sexual and reproductive health, secretarial services, etc. After having gained useful knowledge, our team will be available to them so that they can start creating income generating activities under the mentorship of our team. This will be done through the savings and credit cells set up by the project. 

The project will be implemented closely with the government of Burundi through the Ministry of Technology. To strengthen the financial sustainability, Zoya Group intends to mobilise funds and materials from development support partners (DSPs) such as UNHCR, UNDP, UNICEF, the European Union, etc., as well as the Ministry of Information and Communication Technology, so that they can support the project in making the machines and accessories available in the camps to give the refugee youth more opportunities to learn digital skills in peace. 

The Zoya Group team will install scratch software in these machines to enable the refugee youths to continue learning about programming to strengthen their skills. They will be sufficiently equipped with the programming language so that they can develop their own marketable applications and software.Thus, the products developed by these young refugees will be shared through fairs and other events organised by different organisations and companies.

In addition, the young people grouped in the savings and credit cells will be connected to microfinance institutions (MFIs) to access credit to expand their business.