Empowering young people with life planning and livelihood skills that can help in preventing HIV among young people. The socio-economic vulnerability of young people; particularly those marginalized by gender is recognized as causes of the conditions that put young people at risk of HIV/AIDS. Although governments are desirous of creating jobs for young people, the mechanism to do so has been elusive. AHIP established a livelihood skill acquisition center and integrated peer health, HIV and STI education into the livelihood skills acquisition program of the Institute for human development. The program trains over two thousand and five hundred young people each year. The trained young people are then encouraged to train three young people each. The various trades are ICT; Photography; Video coverage; tailoring; knitting; tie and dye; soap making, pomade making; typing; bags and other crafts of interest; health management; home management; funds management and small business management. The center also engages in advocacy, production and promotion of sales of the centre’s products. The livelihood skill acquisition center produces bed sheets; quilts; veils, cardigans, baby shawls, shawls and some mufflers for children, young people and adults. AHIP through its institute for human development is recruiting a technical team of experts to work out a model for an NGO-government-private sector partnership and collaboration on livelihood options and job opportunities for youths in Jigawa and Kano states.
Training Livelihood Development
The training on integrated livelihood skills development was conducted and 41 participants were trained. Topics addressed at the training were Sustainable livelihood development for young people; the rationale for such intervention; Livelihood framework, Building human capital; Building social capital, financial capital, physical capital, Natural capital, Developmental assets and capacity of local service providers. Assets (external and internal), Challenges, Possible outcome, Strategies, 40 developmental assets; External assets: support, empowerment, Boundaries and expectations, and constructive use of time, Internal assets: commitment to learning, positive values, social competencies and positive identity, Livelihood skills development, Factor conditions, Understanding external context, Conditions to enable livelihood skills opportunities, Demand conditions, Institutional conditions, Industry conditions.