Standard Chartered Donates Ugx 50m Towards Entrepreneurship, Business Development for Youth with Disabilities

Kampala – Friday, 29^th November 2024: Standard Chartered Bank Uganda has today made a donation of Ugx 50,000,000 to the National Union of Disabled Persons of Uganda (NUDIPU) during an event held at its Head Office and presided over by the Executive Director and Head, Corporate at Standard Chartered Bank, Mr. Charles Katongole and the CEO, NUDIPU, Ms. Esther Kyozira.

The event that had participants from Kalangala district started off with a business mentorship session that was led by John Baptist Yawe, the Head of Business Banking at Standard Chartered before the ceremonial handover of the cheque.

The funds aim to promote the socio-economic empowerment of youth with disabilities in Kalangala district through entrepreneurship and business skills development as well as their participation in livelihood programmes and processes that lead to increased access to employment, income generation and social security Services in 2025.

The project will target young persons with disabilities of different impairments, aged 18-35 years who are out of school and interested or involved in entrepreneurship and business management. 60% of beneficiaries will be females with disabilities. Overall, 250 young persons will benefit directly and indirectly 750 household members will benefit indirectly through the different activities of the project.

The project is expected to achieve 3 outcomes: increased incomes and asset acquisitions for youth with disabilities, Increased employment opportunities for both self and waged and increased access to financial and social services. These three outcomes shall lead to socio economic empowerment of Youth with disabilities and hence reduce vulnerabilities and poverty amongst them.

While delivering his remarks, Mr. Charles Katongole the Executive Director and Head of Corporates at Standard Chartered Bank, said;

 

“At Standard Chartered, our brand promise is Here for good and it embodies our commitment to this market, the community and inclusivity as part of our Diversity and Inclusion agenda. This partnership and donation to NUDIPU comes off the back of years of consistently promoting greater economic inclusion for persons with disabilities through our Futuremakers programmes. Our EmployABLE programme helps to create job-ready Persons with Disabilities by providing them with knowledge and soft-skills training, career mentoring and job placements.  We have also previously empowered them by organising career-fairs where we linked over 100 people with disabilities to potential employers, renovated schools, donated braille machines and computers as well as planted trees at Salaama school for the blind located at Kisoga – Mukono.”

He added; “Additionally, in 2021 we embarked on the implementation of a Youth Empowerment, Entrepreneurship and Decent Employment programme worth Ugx 2.8 billion in partnership with Voluntary Service Overseas. This project has focused on the economic inclusion for 1,000 young people (60% women, and 10% PWDs) through improved employability, entrepreneurship, and strengthening of the enabling environment for entrepreneurship and jobs. We are therefore pleased to make an intervention to support more PWDs who are disadvantaged and look forward to empowering them through this project.”

 

On her part, the Chief Executive Officer, NUDIPU – Ms. Esther Kyozera while addressing the participants thanked standard Chartered for this generous donation stating;

“On behalf of the Persons with Disability community, allow me to extend our deepest gratitude for the enormous contribution Standard Chartered Bank makes to uplift PWDs in the country. The Bank is one of the major partners of PWDs in the country and is always inviting us for various engagements as well as offering employment to our people and for that we are very grateful and remain hopeful.

“As NUDIP we chose Kalangala as the district in which to make an intervention because we want to address challenges facing youth with disabilities. According to the 2014 population census there were 2,964 young persons aged 2-30 years in Kalangala out of a population of 7,260 persons with disabilities while youths aged 18-30 years were 1,998 (12.4%).

 

11% of youths were out of school and 38.6% were household heads. The socio-economic hardships persons with disabilities face in Kalangala district are severe given there are 84 scattered islands leading to challenges of mobility and access to socio economic services. Furthermore, it is also reported that women with disabilities are involved in prostitution to earn a living, there is a high incidence of human trafficking, child defilement and Gender Based Violence especially taking advantage of their vulnerability due to impairment and poverty. This project therefore seeks to address challenge of limited incomes, unemployment and limited access to socio economic services facing youth with disabilities in Kalangala island. She concluded

With the Ugx 50 million donation the youth with disabilities running MSEs will be linked to disability and Business networks and value chains that will ensure continued inclusion into the programmes of stakeholders.

The training manuals developed and used to provide Business development services shall be the tools used in scaling up the project deliverables long after funding phase out. The lessons, data and knowledge generated and documented shall be used to source out more resources to sustain the MSEs.