We’re delivering these training sessions to two types of groups this time ; SmartUp Hubs, which are youth training centers where underserved youth can come to learn life-skills and get training on a variety of subjects from tailoring to videography, and we’re also training ‘I-Decide’ groups which are typically women-led rural cooperative businesses that focus on empowering women economically so that they can decide for themselves how to run their lives and not depend on fathers, husbands, brothers or other men who might seek to control them.
During the training we cover three main areas : Lytefire Technical training so that participants have the knowledge to install, calibrate and maintain the equipment, bakery skills training where they learn hygiene, ingredients handling and the techniques to make a variety of delicious recipes, and entrepreneurship which includes everything they need to know to market their goods, do the accounting and manage their inventory.
Youth underemployment is a grave problem in Uganda, especially since the start of the pandemic but the great thing about baked goods is that they never go out of style. The fact that these young ‘solarpreneurs’ are using pure, direct solar energy to bake their products only adds to the excitement ! Many of the areas where we’re training these youth have no local bakeries. Oftentimes the baked goods come from a town over an hour away, so this, in addition to using free, clean solar energy gives our young solarpreneurs a real advantage.
So far we’ve delivered 7 out of the 11 trainings that are planned. 9 are with fresh new groups and come with the latest and greatest Lytefires produced by our amazing team in Kisumu, Kenya, and the other 2 are ‘refresher’ trainings where we’ll revisit the Lytefires we installed in 2018 to train newcomers and conduct training according to the needs of the groups.
It has so far been a tremendous experience, meeting inspiring young people and adapting our trainings to the needs of each group. We’re recognizing that no two groups of young people from different areas are the same, and their needs differ greatly. Luckily, we have a really amazing team on the ground (if I do say so myself !). We have two training teams working at the same time, the first includes me (Lorin) as well as Augustine (who was one of the SmartUp youth we trained in 2018 !) and Allen (a baking industry veteran who is based in Lira, Uganda) and they are training the I-Decide groups, scattered around Lira and the Northern Region, and the second team includes Callum, Hanna and Hashimu, who you might remember from our project last year in Tanzania at the Montessori School in Mwanza. Callum, Hanna and Hasheem are now rocking the SmartUp Hubs (follow us on Instagram @Lytefire_Solar, to not miss out on some pretty incredible content !)
We are extremely grateful to Plan International and Plan Uganda for their support, and we’re proud to have a partner that is so dedicated to the well-being of young people. They’ve recognized that the Lytefire alongside the training we offer tick many many boxes : environmentally sustainable technology, healthy production of healthy products, socially just organization, empowerment for women and girls, cost effective business, and life skills not limited to hygiene, business administration, accounting and more ! It’s not always easy when you assemble a bunch of young people together and put money on the table, but that’s the beauty of projects like this, we can facilitate life changing experiences and set youth on a course for a prosperous and sustainable future.
We’re looking forward to sharing success stories with you, and to working together with Plan to implement this program in more and more groups around the world.
More about the SmartUp Factory Program here.
Update from Spring 2022 - the project has been fully delivered and about 200 participants have been trained, resulting in the creation of 9 local solar bakeries. Read more in the posts.
