By Yiep Joseph
Foundation of Youth Initiative (FYI) and Cooperative Bank of South Sudan have launched an empowerment program dubbed Orange Corners Innovation Fund (OCIF) South Sudan.
As a move to reduce unemployment in the country, the program aimed at empowering aspiring young entrepreneurs to unleash their entrepreneurial potential.
Addressing youth during the Launching on Wednesday Albino Gaw, Chief Executive Officer of the Foundation for Youth Initiative (FYI) expressed that the OCIF program provides seed funding to innovative young entrepreneurs.
He added that the young entrepreneurs selected from the Orange Corner Incubation and Acceleration Components (0CIAC) will be empowered.
Gaw expressed that the program helps young entrepreneurs develop business ventures, obtain working capital, and enter the market.
“With this program, we believe that young people can become a demographic dividend to the Society; that means they can be able to do a lot of good things, positive things that improve the lives of their communities, and more importantly, establish self-sustaining business enterprises,” he said.
“For this program, what we expect from these young people is that they come up with great ideas that need to be funded, and those ideas are designed in a manner that enables them to create jobs for themselves, build assets, generate income, and improve their livelihoods,” he added.
On his part, Bouwe Jan Smeding, Deputy Head of Mission/Head of Development Cooperation at the Embassy of the Kingdom of Netherlands in Juba, added that the program will ease access to finance for the innovative youth.
“We support this program with the Cooperative Bank of South Sudan to ease access to finance overall for young people; it is difficult to get access to finance, and that is one of the bottlenecks for doing business in this country,” he said.
he expressed that the Kingdom of Netherlands remains committed to enable young people to enter businesses and improve their lives and that of their communities.
Rabi Emmanuel, a young entrepreneur and the founder of Arrangers Limited Company, expressed that the program would empower many youths and their initiatives.
“This program helps a lot like in terms of training, we gain a lot like skills, networking, friends and so far, they have given us 2000 dollars to boost our business and i am so happy” he said.
He expressed that, besides several challenges, the young should continue to engage in businesses.