This document describes several innovations by Young and Rich Africa (YARA) to help youth overcome poverty. It discusses challenges related to financial education, personal development, entrepreneurship, and leadership. YARA addresses these through programs that provide financial literacy training, teach personal growth habits, support social entrepreneurship through conferences and seminars, and build skills through creative programs. The goal is to equip youth with skills and opportunities to succeed professionally and strengthen their communities.

1. YOUNG AND RICH AFRICA
Y.A.R.A
Paving the Road to Prosperity
COMPANY
PROFILE

2. What Does It Really Take
TO HELP THE YOUTH
get out of poverty
,ADD VALUE TO THE MARKET PLACE
ITTAKES UNDERSTANDING.
To know, understand and learn about what makes a long-term
difference in peoples’ lives, you need to personally relate with
them, understand their thought pattern, behavioral pattern, what
drives them, what motivates them etc. And we do this through
our near peer-peer mentors.
ITTAKES IDEAS.
ITTAKESYOU.
ITTAKES HEART.
It’s tough to walk the talk. YARA meets and
engages youth in different crises every day. Poor
students, young girls and school drop outs and
the completely hopeless youth, facing burdens
that seem insurmountable. But we can’t give up –
there are too many low-income youth depending
on YARA’s services
Poverty is among the most difficult of all challenges – but we
can’t let that be an excuse. The need for new ideas, creativity,
attitude shift etc never ends.
Often, the tougher a problem is; the more help it takes to
solve. Your help – whether it’s a gift in support of one of these
programs, your work as a volunteer, or your participation in
the many other ways, YARA depends on – brings us that much
closer to making a real difference in the lives of youth.
& Become Successful in Life

3. YOUNG AND RICH AFRICA
Y.A.R.A
WHO WE ARE
Young and Rich Africa. (YARA) is a
movement of young people fighting
poverty and restoring the
economic health of communities
through personal & professional
development, financial education, and
social entrepreneurship through creative
solutions and innovative approaches.
WHAT THIS PORTFOLIO IS ABOUT
YARA’s success in helping youth is built on not only dedication,
hard work and empathy – but also on creative ideas.This portfolio
highlights some of the most significant new ideas at YARA. We
invite you to learn more about these innovations and others by
contacting us at info@youngandrichafrica.org or by visiting our
website at www.youngandrichafrica.org.

4. THE CHALLENGE
FINANCIAL
More than half of the young adults admit to knowing very little about how
to manage their finances, more than half of the adults don’t have a budget.
One-third doesn’t pay their bills on time.Almost third carry lots of debts
over from one month to the next, the trend therefore is carried on from
one generation to the next.
Money pervades the fabric of everyone’s life.Money funds our life-résumés,
from our most basic needs to our most extravagant experiences, but it is
also the leading contributor to divorce, domestic abuse, stress, and low
high-school and university persistence rates.
Given the considerable influence of money on the normal Joe’s psyche,one
may imagine our society, government, schools, and families; would go to
great lengths to promote proven financial education strategies but no, this
is not the case.
EDUCATION
Can mean the difference between a
dream achieved or a dream deferred

5. A nation is more than just the sum of its
parts. It’s not just individual Ugandans or Africans
who feel the effects of being ill-prepared for the finan-
cial realities of adulthood – we all do. As more and more
students enter the workforce unprepared, our economy
weakens, losing its strength, output, and productive potential.
A better educated populace means better-prepared individuals, a
robust economy, and more stability. By spreading financial smarts,
our country as a whole will prosper. Therefore, managing money is
essential to achieving personal and professional goals.
We recruit and train university volunteers to serve as near-peer
role models, university mentors, and financial coaches to low-in-
come, urban-rural teens in high school classrooms and youth
overall within our communities.
In partnership with schools and community organiza-
tions, our volunteers lead A ‘level students through a
21-week program and the rest of the school
through a 14 week program; focused on
the real-world financial decisions
that people face.
THE INNOVATION

6. For so long a lot of attention has been paid to
what we know and not who we are. Education
systems especially inAfrica have so much focused
on equipping youth with knowledge but have
over looked a major critical factor to their suc-
cess which is their level of personal growth.This
is usually left to churches, communities, and par-
ents who usually do not have the time and when
they do have the time, rarely the consistency and
patience to make sure they are embedded into
the lives of their children.
The working, leadership and entrepreneurship
world has now evolved and needs youth with not
only skills and knowledge but with the personal
growth to be innovative in tough situations,moti-
vated in seemingly impossible circumstances,
self-driven in mediocre situations, disciplined in
immorally tempting situations and always seeking
to better themselves, their skills, those around
them hence resulting to an all-round positive
output of excellent service and innovative prod-
ucts, the kind that our nations need to push
Africa forward towards the prosperity we all
want.
THE CHALLENGE
DEVELOPMENT
PERSONAL
You get paid for the value you bring to the market place.

7. The
We have recognized the critical need of
first building and helping to increase the
level of personal growth of the youth by
being there to assist with teaching the
youth what the now days busy working
class parents may either be ignorant of
or simply not have enough time to deliv-
er, or inspiring and mentoring the youth
who have not had the opportunity to be
within reach of life impacting mentors
mostly due to factors like coming from
disadvantaged backgrounds.
This will be through focusing on essential
personal growth habits like:
-Reading (The mentality and acceptance
of the concept that the best way to hide
money from an Africa is by putting it in a
book will be fought strongly with the aim
of literally putting it to an agonizing end)
-Discipline (Time is our greatest asset,
time management skills will be taught
making sure the mentality and accep-
tance of an absurd concept like African
time is abandoned) Learning (The
mentality is learning ends with Univer-
sity is widely acknowledged by even
many adults in Africa, the youth will be
taught and shown the importance of
continually improving themselves and
their skills especially after being done
with school)
-Communication (Essential life skills
like effective communication and pre-
sentation are over looked yet that is
the axle of great leadership, relation-
ships, and active citizenship).
To mention but a few, these and many
more different critical success factors
will be taught to the youth who are
several steps behind their counter-
parts in the developed world with all
this information more easily accessible
to them.
THE INNOVATION

8. Entrepreneurship
Social
When businesses grow, the economy thrives.
Despite a steady nominal Growth in Africa’s economy youth
unemployment still remains a big threat to the sustainability of
Africa’s Economies.
Africa’s population is growing extremely fast with a slow
demographic transition, implying in the near future the youth will
take up a big proportion of the total population. Currently youth
make up 37% of the working-age population with 60% of the total
unemployed, majority of these unemployed youths live in urban
areas, the ones employed have a big tendency of
underemployment, a high concentration in the informal sector, and
sometimes ‘working longer hours under intermittent and insecure
work arrangements characterized by low productivity and meager
earnings’
THE CHALLENGE

9. Social entrepreneurship is a highly
effective way to solve the greatest
challenges facing society and the
environment: extreme poverty, the rapid
spread of HIV/AIDS and other diseases,
the alarming rate of deforestation and
climate change, and the lack of
educational access and quality. Social
entrepreneurship brings market based
solutions to these problems that have
the potential to scale to reach millions of
people and create “generational”
change – change that does more than
just affect a small few, but rather impacts
an entire generation and the course of a
society
In addition, Social entrepreneurship
combines economic growth with positive
social and environmental impact – in
doing so social entrepreneurship drives
sustainable development. The link
between social entrepreneurship and
sustainable development is becoming
more and more accepted. (Adopted
from the Educate Curriculum on Social
Entrepreneurship)
Secondly, we have incorporated
Seminars and Young Entrepreneurs
Conference: We realize that for an
economy to grow, businesses have to
be started and running. Yet these
businesses cannot be started if people
do not have a proper background,
knowledge and the right skills and
training to run them.
The YARA Young Entrepreneurs
Conference (YARAYEC) therefore
provides highly motivated students
from rural and urban high schools an
opportunity to connect with the
broader Uganda business community.
The Conference is structured into two
parts: a business development
workshop and pitch competition
THE WORKSHOP
The workshop serves as a platform
for students enrolled in YARA’s
Financial Life Skills and
Entrepreneurship programs to
develop their business ideas into a
professional pitch.
THE PITCH
The second portion, a pitch
competition, invites highly influential
associates at banks, start-up
companies, consulting agencies, and
non-profit organizations to participate
as judges and audience members, as
the students present and defend their
business plans.
Using the judges’ evaluations, a
winning group is selected to receive
an externship opportunity as a prize.
THE INNOVATION

10. THE CHALLENGE
Leadership
Comes from Within
Teens building skills for stronger communities and brighter futures.
For many rural and urban youth,
having alternatives to risk-taking
behavior is crucial to survival. Too
often, a lack of healthy community
activities leaves them idle and in
danger. Neighborhood programs
that teach teens how to
communicate, lead, overcome
challenges and set goals can often
be the difference between a
dropout headed toward prison and
a youth with a diploma, headed
toward a good job.

11. YARA offers an array of high-intensity, youth-centered programs
that are welcoming and motivational for young people “on the edge”
of making poor life choices.
In Creative and Critical Learning, teens create films, poetry,
paintings and other artworks while building literacy, teamwork and
project management skills.
Young Ladies for a Better Tomorrow brings young women together
to discuss their issues and share experiences and goals through
speaking and writing. Eighteen 101, a series of workshops and
case management sessions for older teens, provides university
search and application supports, career counseling and job
readiness activities and life skill instruction to prepare teens to live
independently.
Youth Engagement Forum meets youth within their communities
and engages them through high intensive debates on issues
affecting them and what solutions they have come up with to solve
these issues. The program is aired live on radio so as to reach a
wider audience. Each of these programs brings teens together to
learn about their peers and communities, and equips them with
basic skills for school, work, and life
THE INNOVATION