Evode Hakizimana Havyarimana, Zimbabwe

Due to political instabilities, economic insecurity, and natural disasters in countries such as DR Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, Mozambique, Somalia, Ethiopia, and South Sudan, thousands of people are forced to leave their home countries in search of peace and safety. With a population of 14,862,924 million in Zimbabwe, 8.09% of youths are unemployed. Today there are 65.6 million people who have been forcibly displaced around the world and over 19.000 refugees have settled in Zimbabwe. An already existing high youth unemployment rate in Zimbabwe makes it nearly impossible for refugee youths to find job opportunities in Zimbabwe with little hope to build a prosperous life. This is affecting youths especially from the age of 18 to 28 years, with consequences such as an increase in sex work, child pregnancies, child marriages, and theft and drug abuse. This often results in the spread of HIV and Aids, youth incarceration, drug addiction and hopelessness. Our organization as well as our projects aim to address these issues through educating the youth to find innovative ways to address the problems they are facing, specifically poverty and unemployment. Our project Transformation Innovation Hub transforms and empowers refugees and local disadvantaged youth from the refugee host community through empowering them to explore innovative and social entrepreneurship in the Tongogara Refugee Camp. TIH seeks to create job opportunities to both the youth in Tongogara refugee camp and locals through supporting them in discovering their ability to pioneer change: finding their life purpose while aligning them to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): and developing their skills to enable them to create self-sustainable social enterprises by turning problems into opportunities and becoming job creators. Through its activities, the Transformation Innovation Hub (TIH) will directly impact the following five UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s) which are NO POVERTY, QUALITY EDUCATION, DECENT WORK AND ECONOMIC GROWTH, INDUSTRY, INNOVATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE AND LASTLY PARTNERSHIP FOR THE GOALS. TIH scholars establish social enterprises that aim to create change by addressing our chosen SDG’s.