By Our Reporter
Reach A Hand Uganda (RAHU) in partnership with Unilever and AFRIpads have launched a youth empowerment project dubbed “The Edupreneurs project” that is aimed at economically empowering young people through supplementing their incomes by a commission tailored sale of home commodities focusing on Lifestyle and health goods.
The project that will rely on RAHU’s ever-growing network of peer educators, will bring services, hygiene products and health information closer to grassroots communities. The products to be currently sold will be made by like minded partners Unilever (particularly Sunlight, LifeBuoy, Royco and Vim) and AFRIpads( particularly So Sure pads).
“Since 2014, Reach A Hand Uganda has been training peer educators and one question that we have always asked ourselves is; how can we empower them economically to earn a living out of the voluntary work that they are doing. I am very positive of this partnership where our fast-growing network of young people can be economically empowered and are assured of a start in life, after their volunteering service with us.” Humphrey Nabimanya, Founder & Team Leader of Reach A Hand Uganda said.
The project is set to kick start as a pilot in the southwestern district of Mbarara where RAHU’s network of volunteers has actively engaged in community-centred mobilization for the receipt of information and services on reproductive health. The peer educators are expected to be given products to which they will sell in communities and get 70% of the profits as a commission.
The peer educators have undergone a robust training on product knowledge, marketing techniques and customer benefits and with the support from the teams at Unilever and AFRIpads, and are receiving commodities at a subsidized cost enabling them to make a significant margin of profit from their sales.
“Through this project, we are not only empowering these young people to become self-reliant and financially accountable but also enabling communities to access basic household commodities, services and health products that they would otherwise move distances for.” Said Gertrude Adeker Emojong, Communications Officer, AFRIpads.
Long term, RAHU is looking forward to bringing more partners on board and expand the project in the future to have a footing in other districts as well as integrate its technological innovations into the project to include an Online Shop on the already existing SAUTIplus portal to enable online orders and deliveries.
