Executive Summary

In today’s world, the youth are facing most of the hardships and lack of belongingness within society. Youth in Nigeria constitute a big chunk of the population, yet it remains the most subjugated and marginalized. The difficult circumstances that young people face, especially the females, because of limited opportunities for education and viable employment, and health and social services, and because of a growing incidence of substance abuse and juvenile delinquency, is deteriorating the chance of Nigeria’s quest for achieving the status of a developed nation. Their imagination, ideals, considerable energies, and vision are essential for the continuing development of the societies in which they live.

The organization here mainly focuses on the most underprivileged female youth residing in urban slums, surviving on meager resources and constantly seeking out a purpose for their life. The organization plans to work with the female youth who have never been nurtured and reared in a way to develop into a productive generation, because of which the petty crimes in the community are constantly on the rise. The delinquency amongst them is not detrimental for the youth only, but the whole urban slum society is on the verge of eruption, as they had no means to devise a solution for the same.

Touchme Foundation for the less privileged has a record of working with the youth for their development and inclusive growth and in continuation of that only it proposes to obtain the resources for the Renewed Hope for the Youth Empowerment Initiative, which has the potential of integrating the values of a good and productive citizen in youth, motivating them to lead a normal life by providing them a platform to develop and showcase their skills. The project will focus on 70% female youth, 28.6% widows and 1.4% male youths within the slum of the Federal Capital Territory to develop them into productive and empowered citizens. The proposal will need resources amounting to Three hundred and seventy-five million naira (N375,000,000.00) which, taking into consideration the purpose it will serve for society, is a justified amount.

Introduction

Nigeria as the most populated black country in the world has been experiencing rapid population growth for at least the last five decades due to very high birth rates, quadrupling its population during this time. Growth was fastest in the 1980s when mortality dropped rapidly. It has slowed slightly since then as both the birth rate and fertility rate has declined marginally since a 1978 peak. According to the 2017 revision of the World Population Prospects, the total population was 185,989,640 in 2017 compared to only 37,860,000 in 1950. The proportion of children under the age of 15 in 2010 was 44.0%, 53.2% were between 15 and 65 years of age, while 2.7% were 65 years or older. There is a large degree of population momentum, with 3.2 percent growth leading to the projected population of 732.9 million by 2100. In 1995, the world youth population defined by the United Nations as the age cohort 15 – 24 is estimated to be 1.03 billion, or 18 percent of the total world population. As of February 23, 2023, it is estimated that 60% of Nigeria’s population is under the age of 25, making it the youngest country in Africa. Most of these youth faced lack of employment and skilled professions due to the rate of growth of inflation in the economy section of the country and the poverty rate.

As part of our mission to society, Touchme Foundation for the less privileged took it upon herself to impact the life of our female youth with the establishment of RENEWED HOPE FOR YOUTH EMPOWERMENT PROGRAM INITIATIVES (RHFYEPI) under which a lot of skill trades will be learned during the six months of the Empowerment initiatives.

Definitions of youth have changed continuously in response to fluctuating political, economic, and sociocultural circumstances. Young people in industrialized countries comprise a relatively smaller proportion of the total population because of generally lower birth rates and longer life expectancy. They comprise a social group that faces particular problems and uncertainties regarding its future, problems that relate in part to limited opportunities for appropriate employment. Many developing countries are also experiencing unprecedented rates of rural-urban migration by young people. The difficult circumstances that people experience in many developing countries are often even more difficult for young people because of limited opportunities for education and training, viable employment, and health and social services, and because of a growing incidence of substance abuse and juvenile delinquency. Their imagination, ideals, considerable energies, and vision are essential for the continuing development of the societies in which they live. Thus, there is a special need for new impetus to be given to the design and implementation of youth policies and programs at all levels. How the challenges and potentials of young people are addressed by policy will influence current social and economic conditions and the well-being and livelihood of future generations.

In 1965, in resolution 2037 (XX), the UN General Assembly endorsed the Declaration on the Promotion among Youth of the Ideals of Peace, Mutual Respect, and Understanding between Peoples. From 1965 to 1975, both the UN General Assembly and the Economic and Social Council emphasized three basic themes in the field of youth: participation, development, and peace. Young people in all parts of the world, living in countries at different stages of development and in different socio-economic settings, aspire to full participation in the life of society. Young people represent agents, beneficiaries, and victims of major societal changes and are generally confronted by a paradox: to seek to be integrated into an existing order or to serve as a force to transform that order.

Justification of Project Proposal

The insufficient access of young women to equal opportunities in employment and education; high levels of youth unemployment, including long-term unemployment; increasing incidence of diseases, such as malaria, the human immunodeficiency virus and the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS), and other threats to health, such as substance abuse and psychotropic substance addiction, smoking and alcoholism; inadequate opportunities for vocational education and training, especially for persons with disabilities; changes in the role of the family as a vehicle for shared responsibility and socialization of youth; lack of opportunity for young people to participate in the life of society and contribute to its development and well-being; prevalence of debilitating disease, hunger and malnutrition that engulfs the life of many young people; increasing difficulty for young people to receive family life education as a basis for forming healthy families that foster sharing of responsibilities; and continuing deterioration of the global environment resulting from unsustainable patterns of consumption and production, particularly in urban societies, which is a matter of grave concern, aggravating poverty and imbalances.

After several consultations with the community members and various other stakeholders in the FCT, the priority need of the youth is the inculcation of social values and TMF Organization had several sessions with the community members to decide the reasons behind youth members of their community taking the illegal and non-productive way to lead their life. The elders lamented the lack of effort and time given by them towards rearing their children, unaccepted social behaviour by community elders in the presence of youth, easy availability of drugs, and alcohol, opportunities for flesh trade, and their negative socioeconomic status, etc.

The proposed approach decided mutually by the implementing agency, community members, and other stakeholders are:

I. Inculcation of social values in youth. II. Exposure to developed and proper ways of living in and outside the community. III. De-stigmatizing them in police peripherals, for the maligned status of youth gives ample opportunity to police to be always suspicious of them. IV. Providing vocational skills to youths in trades with established market demand.

The implementing organization “TMF” has been dedicatedly working towards empowering the female youth in the urban slums since the very first day of its inception in 2020, through several measures such as the feeding of the vulnerable children, empowering widows, youth educational support ‘BACK TO SCHOOL program’ (17,250 youths & widows touched) and several other measures. The organization has the expertise of relating with the youth and working towards their holistic empowerment with ample participation from all the stakeholders. The organization has the distinctive know-how to make youth participate in our programs and avail all of our services.