Youth Leadership Project
Gulu District NGO Forum

The Gulu District NGO Forum is a network organization that promotes a rights-based approach to sustainable development in northern Uganda. The Forum undertakes a variety of initiatives to empower the people of northern Uganda, and Gulu District in particular.

With a grant from the Uganda Fund, the Gulu District NGO Forum has created a Youth Leadership Project in collaboration with local authorities and community-based organizations to support leadership development for youth throughout the Acholi sub-region.

Young people, many of them former child soldiers conscripted into the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), have been particularly affected by the longstanding conflict in northern Uganda. Yet, they have often not been engaged as a priority group in regional development initiatives. The Youth Leadership Project is building the capacities of young people to effectively and constructively engage in policy discussions on the rebuilding of their society by supporting leadership training and capacity building to strengthen grassroots youth groups, providing small grants to support youth organizing and youth-led activities, and awarding scholarships to increase access to university-level education in the field of development studies.
 

2008 Highlights include:
	At the Layibi Skills Training Facility young people learned skills in construction and tailoring (10 sewing machines were purchased); training was linked to apprenticeships, which often led to full-time employment (5 students were employed as masons)
	25 full university scholarships were granted
	10 youth groups received targeted training in proposal development, finance and record keeping
	The Laminongee Youth Development Organization procured more than 60 modern beehives, harvesting 1,282 kilograms of honey for a profit equivalent to $2,576 USD
	25 students attended a three-day workshop on project planning and management, proposal development, governance and leadership, financial management and record keeping

Young boys learn how to make furniture.

Gulu NGO Forum teaches leadership skills to youth groups preparing to leave internal displacement camps and return to their villages.