May 28, 2019 – Last week, the Whitaker Peace & Development Initiative (WPDI) was featured in Euromoney Magazine for our work in and around the Kiryandongo Refugee Settlement in Uganda. More specifically, the impact of our programs on youths was highlighted, with one of our beneficiaries, Mary, quoted about how our Business and Entrepreneurship training course “changed my life” because she “was finally able to start making more money and make a reliable income.”
WPDI has been active in Kiryandongo since 2016 with not only refugees from the settlement – home to some 60,000 people – but also with vulnerable people from the surrounding host communities. With the support of our partner, the Western Union Foundation, we deployed a branch of our flagship program there, the Youth Peacemaker Network, which aims to help put fragile communities on a path toward peace, resiliency, and sustainability by mobilizing local young women and men to bring about change. Our programs combine civic and vocational training – including psychosocial support – with youth-led initiatives in peacebuilding and economic development. In 2018, we reached more than 70,000 people through these activities. Among our proudest achievements are that we now have 19 women-led businesses in the settlement and that the Office of the Prime Minister of Uganda reported that ethnically motivated violence has plummeted in the settlement after we started our youth empowerment-focused work there.
Read the full article here.