The population of Ugandan is largely comprised of a large and increasing cohort of young people. Close to 78 per cent of the country’s population is below the age of thirty. This situation comes along with the many challenges associated with a growing young population like high unemployment and crime rate. There is a lack of awareness by the youth on the availability of government programs for the youth and vulnerable groups. This leads to a lesser understanding of the processes involved in benefiting from these programs since little effort has been put in to create awareness on the availability of the programs. The team at Evidence and Methods Lab believes that breaking down information on various social development programs by the government targeting the youth and vulnerable groups would make the information more understandable to the target groups. The Youth Empowerment through Civic Technology project reaches the youth through presenting information on key government social development and livelihood programmes into appropriate, appealing and easy to understand visualised data. This is done using infographics to target young Ugandans between 17 and 35 years, who are increasingly using new media technology platforms. These are Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, YouTube, Instagram among others and other digital media like local video halls, outdoor and indoor advertising screens, television etc. Extra effort is made to reach the youth in the countryside, where digital media is less apparent and accessible. The team identifies key strategic partners to create awareness with like Community-Based Organisations, District Community Development offices at the Local Government and religious leaders who distribute printed material in their communities.

Empowering youth through bridging the information gap on opportunities 

Research findings and data are only useful when shared using the ever-evolving multiple platforms. Similarly, it means that cutting edge technologies and approaches should be utilized in the collection of and generation of this evidence and to ensure learning is derived from them. 

To this end, Evidence and Methods Lab through the Youth Empowerment through Civic Technology (YECT) project, are breaking down information on various social development programs by government and targeting vulnerable groups with it, making it available and understandable.  This is achieved by acquiring information relating to a particular programme and then creatively packaging this information using tools like illustrations, infographics (still and motion) and short informative communication both on online and offline platforms into simple step by step guides for the beneficiaries. The main purpose is to empower youth, equip them with sufficient knowledge to adopt and demand for social development support, improve livelihood of the youth living in rural, peri urban and urban environments, improve reception and conception of government social development programmes by the youth and other special groups, increase demand for more transparency, accountability in government programmes targeting youth. 

The project has managed to translate eight critical Uganda government programmes that directly impact youth into an easy to understand audio visual format and distributed the same on various online and offline platforms. These translated materials reached over half a million young people in the country. The materials were developed using a multidisciplinary approach in combination with digital information visualization and through eight existing youth groups and other government leadership structures. This established a team of allies in different sub counties in the eight districts covered. The 18,000 printed posters and those distributed online contributed to closing the information gap on government programmes targeting youth. 

Subsequently, some of the youth used the materials to apply for some of the government development programmes, like Emyooga and received funding to invest in their businesses and improve the lifestyle of their loved ones.