Youth tipped on measuring own invented businesses

KAMPALA —Over 100 youth have been trained in how to use monitoring and evaluation tools to track business goals under the MTN youth Skilling program.

The MTN youth skilling program is a partnership between MTN Foundation Uganda and Ubinufu systems aimed at inspiring and empowering youth with the goal of creating practical ICT driven solutions to challenges in society.

The program, which kicked off in December 2020 targeted 100 beneficiaries from university graduates, small and medium enterprises and young innovators in a bid to prepare them for a market where they can create and sustain jobs.

This year, the program has offered online training workshops for the youth focused on how to successful run a business focused on the day-to-day operations.

In the recently held a session, Nelson Munyanda the Manager of MTN Foundation tabled the use of monitoring and evaluation in one’s business or tasks.

Munyanda detailed the methodology used in evaluating projects and static businesses. He observed that for the development of business plans and proposals, goal objectives must be set and there must be checks and balances.

Mr. Munyanda went on to discuss the importance of setting a criteria for M&E that includes measures of effectiveness, relevance, impact, coordination and cohesion.

He added that one must be able to map their businesses stakeholders and know how to address their different concerns n order to have business success.

He added that the M&E comprises of a logical framework that outlines the objectives, inputs, outputs, and outcomes of the intended project and the indicators that can be used to measure all these. Also, a baseline study should be undertaken to ascertain the level of the business or project with mid-term and endline evaluations.

These checks and balances are aspects of monitoring and evaluation that help to address the progress of the project and how to ensure the sustainability of projects or businesses.

“Every job, activity, business, and project have an aspect of Monitoring and evaluation (M&E), this is seen at the planning stage, implementation stage, and close out of a project. One must have an M & E framework which will help evaluate their goals and targets of their work to achieve the desired success” said Mr.Munyanda.

As he ended his discussion, he concluded by reminding the listeners that feedback is a very important aspect in M&E and tasked them to ensure tools such as informal conversations, observations and surveys are put in place to collect this reliable feedback.

This online training session had over -100 youth participants who were listening in and participating with a number of raised questions to the moderator who answered and guided them with answers and research topics.

MTN Uganda foundation realizes the deep challenge of the unemployment crisis in Uganda and has taken up such interventions to extend knowledge and skilling to the youth so they can take strides in improving their businesses or creating jobs that will serve them and their communities to deter the increasing unemployment rates.

Through these upskilling training sessions, MTN Uganda is reverberating its commitment to fostering shared value through supporting the government in advancing the attainment of the UN SDG set goals.