Promoting Young People through Financial Inclusion Plan In

 Research has shown that billions of people globally are caught up in the realms of economic woes and erratic events such as climate change, armed conflict, and difficulties of the new normal. Millions more are unreachable by traditional humanitarian aids, not only in South Sudan but also worldwide, as the severity of vulnerability and the scope of the disasters and world conflicts continue to increase immensely. 

72% of the South Sudan population is estimated to be below 30 years old (World Bank Report, 2018). More than 70% of the population between 15 and 24 are out of school and unemployed (AfDB Bank Report, 2019)

Due to dire insecurity situation in rural villages of South Sudan, characterized by violence, hunger and economic woes, has forced teenagers to come to urban centers seeking save havens and job opportunities. This in turn increases the population in underserved towns like Mvolo and puts pressure on already little or inadequate basic services which aggravates the youth vulnerability further. Children are forced to drop out of schools and several families are surviving on stream and river water. This is a problem and an opportunity at the same time for AECO.

It was reported by Ako’o FM 99 run by Every Village in December last year that 89% of school going age (14-22) are involved in petty crimes which has claimed 37 lives including suicides in Mvolo County. The growing economic woes, unemployment, and loafing are causing frustration and destitute among the youth in South Sudan, resulting into suicides and petty crimes. Mvolo is one of the poorest counties of Western Equatoria state exacerbated by protracted conflicts. The unfolding situations led to extreme poverty and vulnerability among the youth of hard-to-reach communities. Nine of the deaths reported last year alone were from HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis B combined. At the time of preparing this proposal, there is measles outbreak that has claimed 3 lives so far.

Humanity is all about quality of life and wellbeing of people including the fundamental conditions that favor and guarantee human development. It is essential to provide instrumental lessons which expand people’s real options and substantive freedoms and capabilities that enable them to lead lives they value. It is very unfortunate to learn that up to the present time, very little assistances are available or allocable to reach more than 3.7 billion people in need or severely impacted globally. These unpredictable interruptions keep on disrupting youth lives rapidly, by undoing or erasing humanitarian emergency response to the casualties/victims of such salient calamities. Human development is important to pursue with lifesaving technologies because it is about people  to lead lives they deserve.

Through this Project AECO implements an inclusive out of school rescue program and recovery strategies. This will help in designing gender sensitive response and financial aid strategy that will be reflective of its internal standards and applicable elsewhere beyond this region. AECO is seeking a support of $110,200 to implement this project for a timeline of 12 months to be completed. 

The future economy must target young people to tap their potential skills into productive technologies. AECO intends to provide financial inclusion program for the youth to empower them to start up micro small and medium enterprises such as vegetable, groundnut, and fish farming investments. Vegetable, groundnuts, and small fish have high market demands in Mvolo County. It is one of lucrative ventures that AECO plans to engage and absorb out of school youth and prepares them in small self-reliance vendors to begin a new challenge into decent life.

The solution is to identify youth capacity gaps and come up with strategies. One of the immediate outputs is setting up the stakeholder platform known as small self-help groups. This shall be organized and composed of leading local experts from the specific sectors and youth groups. They brainstorm and deliberate, for a specific period, meet to discuss further key issues/details with respect to financial support and establishment of MSMEs. The meetings are further backed-up by invited resource persons on a specific topic tabled for discussion during the meeting.

The stakeholder platform serves as policy guidance, sounding board, lobby group and advocacy team for the financial inclusion program. The stakeholder platform includes representatives from the wider youth categories, traders, vendors, financial institutions, fishers, agribusinesses, farmers, and local government councils.

AECO aims to address barriers to local financial inclusion and adaptation by raising awareness that inspires women, youth, farmers, fishers, and local venders as broad beneficiaries.  Because their interactions with the public make them to be very influential groups to champion change in the society. Their decision and participation contribute to the new solutions that limit the magnitude of poverty, climate change, and economic hardship.

 This project  offers venders business opportunities for micro, small and medium enterprises to emerge and grow their client network for incomes. AECO is seeking a support of $110,200 to implement this project for a timeline of 12 months to be completed.

It is planned to build relationships and create community awareness to support local initiatives. It  paves way for rethinking of resource diversification from foreign donors to local ones. It identifies local partners from the general population as the new sources of income for CBOs. It is targeting the youth aged 14 to 22 as the direct and primary beneficiaries of the project. Women, farmers and business community are broad beneficiaries.

The strategies to be achieved are: - organizing the youth to establish small business enterprise and develop their capacity with MSMEs smart tools to become productive decision makers of tomorrow. --motivating boys and girls with financial aid for economic opportunities to become self-reliant entrepreneurs with lucrative activities  to integrate youth efforts into global perspectives to gain recognition and support. - raising awareness to mitigate extreme poverty and meet the dynamic needs of the present circumstances to transform their lifestyles, focusing on existing institution policies and service deliveries to uphold new mechanisms for sustainability.

The purpose of this project plan is to address the most critical issues of youth such as unemployment, loafing, and lack of capital base to engage them into entrepreneurship and lucrative activities. It is designed to equip the youth with skills and tap their talents to boost economic recovery and community development.  

 The project reduces the youth exposure to committing suicides and drug abuse that led to contraction of deadly viral disease like HIV/AIDS, nodding disease syndrome, hepatitis B&C which is also prevalent in Mvolo with devastating death cases among the youth. We call for bold decision makers and people with financial authorization to take actions and support this new solution that timely responds to the needs of the most affected, vulnerable, inaccessible, and hard-to-reach school dropouts and other categories.

The designed technology is meant to identify and select the most vulnerable youth categories such as school dropouts due to lack of support from guardians/parents, pregnancies, and other factors which are salient due to inequalities in our societies. AECO places them with an equal number into 3 groups of 15boys and 15girls with each group 10 members.  Mvolo has abundant fertile land for agricultural economics.

The project is targeting out of schoolboys and girls to organize them into small self-help groups in the selected priorities such as vegetable, groundnut, and fishing groups. This optimizes production of goods and services using finances to determine resource allocation, distribution, and consumption.

The funds will be strictly used for capacity building of selected priority participants and purchase of required tools and materials for field demonstrations. This will in turn impart them with skills and necessary knowledge to strengthen their learning. By so doing, it will enable them to exercise the techniques and skills acquired to improve their living conditions and cultivate frugality in the youth to rebuild their lives.  

It is programmed to build relationships and create community awareness to support local initiatives. It will pave the way for rethinking of resource diversification from foreign donors to local ones. It will identify local partners from the national companies or societies as the new sources of income for CBOs. It is targeting the youth aged 13 to 21 as the direct and primary beneficiaries of the project. Women, farmers, and local venders are broad beneficiaries.  Farming remains the only viable future solution for economic growth of the Country.

It calls for bold decisions and swift actions to support the youth in the face of unemployment, economic uncertainties, and adversity of climate change. This involves the youth, farmers, women group, fishermen, business community and other vulnerable categories. 

AECO is well poised to deliver the pilot project in Mvolo, since it has built good relationships with local community and government authorities during its experience of two years operation in the county. It considers educating and empowering the youth category as part and parcel of its civic engagement campaigns including how to access credibility of information and engage with issues of power, privilege, and injustice.

A Project personnel management plan of this proposal is crucial to lead and prepare schedules and assign tasks to the project team. To motivate and inspire youth with home growing technology and innovation, since the project will hire: i) The Economic Recovery Specialist, who will be responsible for the overall administration and management of the project. He/she with the team will continue to develop proposals for the future and manage staff leadership and develop simple training manuals and provide progressive reports and risks response. ii) MELAR Assistant, who will be leading the training, monitoring and evaluation team with a toolkit of techniques to ensure that the project deliverables meet the required results and standards within the timeframe for accountability commitment iii) Financial Assistant, who will be taking care of expenditure records and budgetary requirements for the project implementation and variances as well as financial management. Vi) Community Mobilizer, who will be responsible for mobilization and conduct initial village meetings and orientations

The solution is currently targeting 15 boys and 15 girls out of school as the primary beneficiaries. 7 MSMEs, 25 farmers and  23 women  as extended and wider stakeholders. 

AECO started as a voluntary support to cleaning campaigns and waste collection along Gurei-Gudele roads in Juba. Under the theme “Clean Environment is Healthy and Wealthy.” Since then, it has worked towards fostering indigenous communities’ involvement in environment conservation at Mvolo. The aim of the organization is to transform the society based on the values of biosecurity, biodiversity, equity, and justice ensuring overall development of community with ecological assessments. It also conducted Corona Virus awareness and reached 720 participants with learning materials, thus distributed 1200 face masks, and disseminated radio talk show messages on preventive measures, Nov,2020 in Mvolo. It trained 20 participants on the basic principles of ecological diversity, habitat safety, and waste management, October 2021 in Juba. AECO’s primary objective is to improve public participation and understanding of the environment, to promote nature conservation for economic viability and sustainable developmen

Through Solve, AECO will be able to make positive impact, as it is currently engaged in projects that focus on reducing extreme poverty, adversity of climate change, environmental degradation, and extinction of wildlife species across the country. We are working hard to extend our programs to 10 states and 3 administrative areas in South Sudan, helping and inspiring communities to make bold decision and take swift action to prevent salient interruptions of erratic events. To reach out to the most vulnerable through capacity building training programs we request Solve to help us realize our dreams. Considering the many years of protracted armed conflict that has torn the country apart. This has impacted youth and exacerbated their vulnerability further resulted to extreme poverty including various socioeconomic challenges, inaccessibility of basic services, illiteracy, and health issues in hard-to-reach communities. AECO with its local resource partners, stakeholders and community is working hard around the clock within its docket to reach out of school youth and ensure that the impacts of extreme poverty, climate change and violent tribal armed conflicts are mitigated in South Sudan.

AECO is a relief, advocacy, and development research organization with biosecurity values. It works with partners and hard-to-reach communities to address biodiversity and environmental conditions in humanitarian actions and emergencies. It is non-profit and non-governmental organization. It was founded in July 2020 by South Sudanese natural activists in response to enormous pressure that threatens the national environment (waste pollution, deforestation, climate change, desertification, extinction of wildlife species, oil spillages and erratic events) exacerbated by protracted conflicts, among others. First registered with Relief and Rehabilitation Commission (RRC)- Juba, NO:3044, in accordance with NGO Act 2016. With liaison office in Juba and operation at Mvolo County. 

AECO aims to address barriers to local financial inclusion and adoption by raising awareness that inspires women, youth, farmers, fishers, and local venders as broad beneficiaries. These are the stakeholders to be engaged with, as needed to transform the livelihoods of the local communities. Because their interactions with the public make them to be very influential groups to champion change in the society. Their decision and participation contribute to the new solutions that limit the magnitude of poverty, climate change, and economic hardship

The expected outcomes and results are: -

 Enabled learners to make informed decision by understanding real -world problems like armed conflicts, poverty, hunger, illiteracy, climate change, tribal violence, and environmental destructions to build networks and organize plans for collective actions.

30 youth (15boys &15girls) acquired skills and knowledge in economic recovery through financial aids for vegetable and fish farming strategies, including climate adaption practice, environmentally friendly, bookkeeping and entrepreneurship as part of their capacity building to ameliorate business opportunities.

Helped gather, synthesized, and used relevant data to inform the product designs tailored to populations at risk of facing shocks such as climate disasters, health related disruptions and unstable markets.

10 youngsters received fishing nets/hooks and 2 solar powered fridges that enables their efforts to catch fish, preserve and sell it fresh to get income, the cash proceeds in turn, they will use to pay school fees or to improve their lives.  

Solar powered fridges technologies developed and promoted for fishing, processing/preserving small fish species, and supplied local markets with varieties of fresh fish.

 Increased the ability of individual MSME owners to take risk and build economic stability from the proceeds of selling fresh fish products.

Made it easy and more affordable for individuals and MSMEs to make investment, transfer and payment for school fees, goods, and basic services across counties on different types of platforms.

10 members provided with vegetable/groundnut seeds were able to grow more greens/groundnut paste and supply the local markets to earn a living.  

Ensured access to financial tools that allow everyone to take risks, planned and survive upheavals that require tailored solutions to provide inclusive, and equitable access to affordable financial inclusion and recovery.  

The Solution strategies to be achieved are: -

One, organizing the youth to establish small business enterprise and develop their capacity with smart tools for MSMEs to prepare them to become productive decision makers of tomorrow.

Two, motivating boys and girls with provision of financial aids and economic opportunities to become self-reliance and entrepreneurs with lucrative activities that are eco-friendly to integrate youth efforts into global perspectives or endeavors to gain recognition and support.   

Three, raising awareness to mitigate extreme poverty and meet the dynamic needs of the present circumstances to transform their lifestyles focusing on existing institution policies and service deliveries for the youth in Mvolo to uphold new mechanisms for sustainability.

Monitoring will be carried out right from the project inception, to ensure that processes and results are documented regularly. This would in turn allow steering decisions and modifying the project processes to meet the deliverables in a timely manner. AECO will ensure an appropriate and rigorous approach to measure outcomes base on qualitative and quantitative results. There will be midterm and end evaluation of the project deliverables which will be conducted at the end by independent evaluator recommended by the resource partner. The evaluation criteria will be based on creating positive and significant resulting impacts according to -awareness, attitudes and behavioral change, skills in dress designs & tailoring, number of vegetables and fresh fish supplied to the local markets, intention, interpersonal communications, current use of media campaigns as model and trends of transformation.

Reporting system. AECO will first submit inception report after month, then followed by report progress reports every month to the donor, covering both technical/narrative and financial aspects, which should highlight implementation milestones, issues, and follow-up actions to be taken. Knowledge products will be produced and disseminated accordingly. All external and internal reports will be delivered as required with quality photographs.

Auditing. An audited statement of account expenditure will be provided to resource partner. An independent accredited audit firm shall be assigned to prepare audit statement for submission to the resource partner. Risk and assumption plans will be done using SWOT and risks assessment tools.

The Operational Overview of the Project

M & E Log frame

Project Title

 Planning My Future Economy through Self-help Farming

Overall Goal

To educate, empower, and equip the youth with creative avenues, practical skills, and investment opportunities to actively participate and contribute to community innovation and economic stability

Program Narratives

Intervention logic

Objectively Verifiable indicators

Means of verification

Assumptions

/risks

Specific Objective

To identify, establish and organize the youth into micro, small and medium business enterprises (MSMEs) with smart tools to improve access to financial inclusion and become productive entrepreneurs of tomorrow

-30participants trained in vegetable, groundnut, and fish farming,

-80% of beneficiaries have access to basic financial aids with minimum skills in business records

-80% of 30 randomly selected youth can give a positive example of improved livelihoods

-Participant training lists signed,

-Accommodation feeding

/transport vouchers paid for by AECO

-Reports from focus group discussion

-field visit reports

-Project records

-FGD questionnaires

-All level of government remains supportive of AECO’s program

-Local structures commit to take over from AECO at the end of the project

-Coordination with others is harmonious

Risks

-. Unrealistic schedules or inadequate funding

- Community members unwilling to take part in trainings,

- Political instability in South Sudan

Outcomes

The youth level of attitude, behavior/lifestyle, and perception have changed, and their performance in MSMEs have improved

-30 boys/girls using gained skills and received necessary tools and equipment for their MSMEs practice

# of youth engaged and maintained tools and equipment

###p#< of youth whose lives have improved

Output

Youth technical capacity in vegetable/ groundnut/ fish farming skills developed

Training material content developed

15 boys & 15 girls earmarked to received vegetable/groundnut seeds, & farming tools, fishing hooks/nets, and   solar powered fridges,

# of youth enlisted for MSMEs support.

Beneficiary list

Activities

Develop youth technical capacity in MSMEs management

3 youth self-help groups formed and trained in the recommended techniques

# of actual youth group formed, trained, and participated in MSMEs

The activities powered my technology: - conduct dialogue/consultation meetings with specific youth groups e.g., fishers, farmers/producers, traders, businesspersons, and policy makers at Mvolo Town

Identify, select, and form youth vulnerable individuals into 3 small self-help groups, consisting of 15 boys and 15 girls out of school teens.

Develop and conduct capacity gaps assessment to identify needs as basis for training.

Formulate and train them on simple bookkeeping, minutes taking and data filing and reporting.

Prepare training modules & implement workshops on recommended innovative solutions in priority areas such as vegetable, groundnut and fish farming, high quality small fish-based products, and processing practices.

Procure and purchase 2 solar powered fridges, vegetable/groundnut seeds, farm tools, and 5 wheelbarrows.

Solicit and provide small capital base for the 3 youth self-help groups to start up micro, small and medium enterprises after acquiring necessary techniques, tools, knowledge, and skills to rebuild their lives.

Prepare and carryout radio talk shows on youth empowerment and conservation campaigns.

Disseminate information, share knowledge, and report lessons from the project results to partners.   

The transitional constitution of South Sudan allocates 35% for women as affirmative action meanwhile AECO reflects the same action. 

We respect the diversity of our staff environment by giving 35% to women as the best composition in establishing an employee equity program, to capture opportunities and make things happen, with changing attitudes for equitable innovation and sustainable development

The modal is impacted by the below evidences

• Improved livelihoods of local communities through creation of jobs that enhanced access to employment for the youth and farmers
• Reduced in levels of poverty, gender-based violence, insecurity, and petty crimes among the civil population in Mvolo County
• Enhanced economic growth among small self-help farming groups in the county
• Increased entrepreneurial skills and technical training like crafts, vocational (ICT) digital technologies, and financial literacy
• Improved literacy among local youth and farmers due to enhanced critical and creative thinking skills
• Ameliorated inter-communal relations have improved social skills and integrate environmental conservation and climate actions
• Emphasized realization and reliance on local technologies and capacity building to derive community-led development and management skills, teamwork, effective communication skills, and local persuasion skills
• Improved hygiene and sanitation as compared to the situation before the project implementation
• Increased access to social amenities such as water, schools, markets, health centers shelters and clothing
• Improved in tax payments to local authorities by citizens because of this project due to increased fiscal sensitization
• Enhanced awareness on the presence of important infrastructure that act as development catalysts and increased rural accessibility such as roads, schools, bridges, and police post as the wider outcomes
• Ameliorated accessibility to schools, markets, healthcare, WASH facilities, and farming tools in rural areas
• Improved performance among the AECO staff personnel due to effective and efficient capacity building training farming programs
• Reduced corruption cases among the working class/employees and increased accountability and environmental justice in the county

Sustainability and Exit Strategy

The project will be implemented as a complimentary action to the already existing and ongoing activities. Thus, it is not in isolation and will leverage resources such as staff and capital equipment from current AECO personnel and assets. The project management facilities will be absorbed into AECO’s operating structure. All project component will be fully incorporated into regular AECO operating system including funds for maintenance and continuing to service small self-help groups and farmers. The formation of small self-help groups and the training programs will also continue as constituents of AECO’s facilitation requirement for micro, small and medium enterprises.

By funding this initiative, you are affirming and contributing to the agency mandate to create awareness of the interactions between people and their teeming environment. Change the ill lifestyles detrimental to the environment and install eco-friendly with bricolage behavior. Ensure that conflicts do not arise between pastoralists and farmers due to scarcity of grazing land. Embrace peace to minimize violence for sustainable development. Enable the agency institution capacity building in resource cooptation and financial bootstrapping to provide strong linkages between peace and environment conservation strategies in the region.  

For in the instance, the previous,the project was managed by Agency for Environment Conservation with support from Women Aid Vision and the Local Government Council. To ensure sustainability of the project, beneficially communities will contribute of sand, bricks and provision of water for the construction of the evacuation shelter, pit latrines and bathrooms in the previous Project. The building will also be used to generate income for the CBO through room hiring and renting when it is not occupied by the flood victims. It can be used as a storage facility for some NGOs’ items, wedding functions, for under five clinic and public health issues, village meetings and many more. Some of these activities will bring revenue to the community for maintenances