3rd Edition of the International Perspectives on Youth Entrepreneurship Training Commences

The International Labour Organisation (ILO), Lusaka Office and the Commonwealth Youth Programme Regional Centre for Africa (CYPRCA) are happy to announce the commencement of the 3^rd Edition of its annual international Trainer of Trainers (ToT) conference on the International Perspectives in Youth Entrepreneurship Training (IPYET) slotted for April, 2012. The IPYET-2012 conference is preceded by an online programme from the 9^th of January-30^th March, 2012.

To this effect, the Commonwealth Youth Programme Regional Centre for Africa (CYP RCA) has put on a new online discussion platform called Wiki Platform to manage the online component and assessments for the IPYET 2012 as well as providing general information about the IPYET conference.

The 2012 training, has admitted 37 participants across the continent who include; youth development practitioners, social development programmers, enterprise mentors, trainers and academicians. IPYET is an annual intensive ToT course in Youth Enterprise and ideally helps participants to share experiences from the different countries they come from and at the same time are introduced to contemporary materials, techniques and approaches as tools for their future development.

This particular workshop seeks to address a number of underlying/unending questions that have arisen due to the several manuals, tools, models, frameworks, and approaches in training young people in entrepreneurship which are as a result of the diversity especially that participants have different experiences from their countries. Hence this International approach of training tries to address the many questions/issues that young people may wish to consider such as; the effectiveness and efficiency of the entrepreneurship trainings, their failures and successes, lessons learnt and whether they are youth focused.

IPYET 2012 will expose participants to Youth Development, Entrepreneurship, Finance, Sustainability of Youth Enterprises and Business Development Supports Services among other modules both on the online and residential programmes. Assessment will be equally done and CYPRCA, ILO and partners will provide a virtual support programme on technical advisory support and Business Development Services for implementation and evaluation of the learning from the training. As such, participants will be expected to develop action plans for enhancing current Youth Enterprise Training Programmes in their countries.