The Jesuit Urumuri Centre (JUC) launched a Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship program for youth. At its completion, participants will have learned how to prepare, run, and nurture good business ideas. The initiative came about as a result of observing young graduates and job-seekers competing for employment in an environment where opportunities are very scarce.

Jesuit Urumuri intends to empower the youth to become more self-reliant and to become job creators for their peers. The launch of the program was preceded by a call for applications where a selection of 40 participants were invited to attend the training.

The training is being run at the premises of the Centre and is being facilitated by experts in the fields of Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Launched on the 7 September 2020, classes began on the 21 September 2020, and participants have so far covered the first module titled “Self-discovery” in the manual of the program and continue to the second module within the week; “Self-realization, Innovation Development & Prototyping”.

Ingabire Milandra, a beneficiary in this training shared that the “Self-discovery” module was beneficial to her as she is now more aware of what she needs to do to achieve her entrepreneurial goals; “We have learned that one of the most important things to pay attention to when doing business, is self-image and that this is important because we need each other in society, which requires collaboration with others”

Speaking at the launch of the program, the director of JUC, Fr. Patrice Ndayisenga SJ expressed his delight at the progress made by the Jesuit Urumuri Centre which has been able to realize its vision of accompanying the youth during these challenging times. He stressed the fact that every year there are new graduates from high schools and universities, whose rate is not proportional to the rate of available job vacancies and opportunities. He however expressed his confidence in the selected participants stating; “We selected you because you provided us with good business ideas that have great potential and we are confident that after learning all five modules of this program, you will be well on your way to starting your businesses and creating opportunities for others”.

For more information on the progress of this training program, check the Jesuit Urumuri Centre {here}.