Youth Employment for Sustainable Development The project intended to empower selected young women and men to participate in addressing the teething socio-economic challenges in their communities through providing them with marketable skills, decent jobs and business opportunities. The Project will link broader employment, economic and social policies to targeted interventions aimed at overcoming the specific disadvantages faced by young people in entering and remaining in the labour market. It is based on the ILO’s Global Employment Agenda (GEA) that lays out a comprehensive framework to address youth employment through an integrated and inclusive approach. By including the ILO Green Jobs Initiative approach as part of the Decent Work Country Programmes (DWCP), the Project will also help to fill the knowledge gaps and contribute to policy formulation aiming at minimizing the costs and manage the effects of future climate change. The Project will address both labour demand and supply, creating employment opportunities for youth as well as strengthening their employability by providing them technical and business skills training as well as advice on establishing and sustaining business. The demand-side will be addressed through linkages with broader Government strategies for employment such as Kazi kwa vijana (KKV) and Roads 2000 Programme. The key requirements for a successful implementation of such project include strong commitment from policy makers, efficient project management and supervisory capacity, vibrant private sector participation and strong community ownership. It also calls for building adequate training capability that caters for personnel at all levels of authority. There is further a need to mainstream crosscutting social and environmental issues in the regular programmes of roads agencies in order to conform to international and national laws, norms and good practices (particularly with respect to upholding human rights, gender equality, fair working conditions, HIV & AIDS prevention and protection, child right and environmental protection). The project will therefore assist local partners to build planning and implementation capacity infrastructure development programmes as well as strengthening training institutions in the Ministry of Roads thereby creating a vibrant employment intensive programme that is responsive to the social-economic needs of the country. The proposed project will run for twelve months from January 2012. Following on the foregoing, the proposed project will have the following four areas of focus: i) Development of youth owned SMEs ii) Strengthening training capacity of KTC through mainstreaming models for cobblestone and Do-nou technologies iii) Capacity building for implementing agencies iv) Strengthening programme/project Monitoring and evaluation These will be informed by ILO experiences in the country and elsewhere as well as interventions that have worked, such as the use of ILO entrepreneurship training packages and other tools related to EIIP. These interventions are in line with the Kenya’s Decent Work Country Programme priorities particularly employment creation, youth development, and expansion of social protection. The desired long term impact of the project is also framed along ILO/AU/IGAD Employment for Peace, Stability and Development Strategy, which calls for a holistic approach to employment as key to poverty alleviation.