23 Mar 2022

The Ministry of Youth Empowerment, Sport and Culture Development has a number of programmes and initiatives geared towards empowering young people holistically.

Answering a question in Parliament recently, Minister Tumiso Rakgare told legislators that the programmes cater for the youth’s spiritually, socially, economically, politically and other aspects of their lives. He explained that there were eight programmes that were designed to cover the economic and financial needs of young people.

Such programmes, he said included Youth Development Fund (YDF), which was started in 2009 to empower young people from age 18 to 35 with funds to start or continue businesses at a 50 per cent loan and 50 per cent grant.

The YDF was also aimed at creating employment for young Batswana, he said.

Another programme, he said was the Botswana National Service Programme (BNSP) or Tirelo Sechaba, a volunteer programme aimed at assisting youth from age 18 to 30.

“Participants of this programme are attached to government departments, government organisations and non-governmental organisations.

They work from 7:30am to 12:45pm and afforded P700 living allowance.

Tirelo Setshaba helps young people to gain work skills when looking for employment and educational opportunities,” he said.

Under the National Internship (NIP) Programme, he said young graduates, who were also attached to government departments, government organisations and NGOs and given a monthly living allowance of P1 320, were equipped with work skills.

Also, he said there was the Graduate Volunteer Scheme (GVS) whose objectives were the same as those of the NIP and BNSP. He indicated that GVS participants were attached to departments while awaiting to join the internship programme or after exiting the programme at a P700 allowance.

Under the Constituency Sport Tournaments, a mass participation programme, young people are given an opportunity to showcase their talents in sporting codes such as volleyball, football and netball and athletes competed from ward level to national level, with winning teams awarded prize monies at each level.

Further, Mr Rakgare said the district athletics was also part of programmes aimed at affording young athletes an opportunity to exhibit their talents in track events at district and national levels.

“Each winning athlete is awarded prize money for every race. District athletics competitions are used as a platform for scouts to identify talent for their teams, thus creating employment for these young people,” he said.

Also, among the programmes, he said, was the popular President’s Day Competitions, which was open to both youth and adults and aimed at giving individuals and groups the opportunity to showcase their artistic talents.

“It starts from regional and ends at national level and at each level winners are paid prize monies.” Lastly, he said was the Constituency Arts Competitions, which was also a mass participation programme meant for out of school youth and the unemployed or those earning less than P2 500 per month.

The competition, he said, was run in two cycles and performed at ward and constituency levels while winners at each level were also paid prize monies. Zeroing in on the Mahalapye Sub-district, as Mr Yandani Boko, MP for Mahalapye East had asked about the status of the youth programmes in his constituency, he said 881 young people had benefited from the YDF since its inception.

Therefore, Mahalapye East, which is part of the sub-district has 249 YDF beneficiaries, he said,  indicating that there were 2 090 participants registered and enrolled in the BNSP, out of which 140 were from Mahalapye East.

“A total of 632 artists participated during the President’s Day Competitions in the Mahalapye Sub-district, 48 of whom were from Mahalapye East. A total of 545 artists from Mahalapye Sub-district also participated in the Constituency Arts Competitions - 129 were from Mahalapye East.”

He added that in the Constituency Sport Competitions 5 189 athletes took part from the sub-district out of which 1 709 were from Mahalapye East.

Therefore, he said a total of 2 272 young people have participated in the MYSC economic programmes and had benefited from the eight programmes either as individuals or groups.

He said the ministry also made a deliberate gesture to procure only from youth businesses during youth competitions, during which young people were encouraged to sell their products to benefit from the market bases that came along with the competitions.

Mr Boko had asked the minister to state the number of programmes in place specifically to empower young citizens in the country both economically and financially.

He also wanted to know how each of the programmes had assisted the young people in his constituency since inception. He also wanted to know the number of youth in the Mahalapye East constituency who had since benefitted from the programmes. ENDS