Advocates Meet MPs to Push for Youth Agenda

Youth under the National Youth Advocacy Platform (NYAP) have rallied Members of Parliament under the Parliamentary Forum on Youth Affairs to push for the youth agenda as a legislative agenda.

This was during an orientation meeting with members of the Parliamentary Forum on Youth Affairs of the 11^th Parliament most of whom are new MPs especially the Youth MPs.

The NYAP National Coordinator, James Cleto Mumbere said that the engagement is aimed at ensuring that the new MPs commit to advocate for the youth in their legislation for the period of five years.

“We have new MPs who just came into office early this year, we the youth actors on the other side didn’t seem to know each other. We are here to highlight and amplify the agenda of the youth among the MPs that have subscribed to be members of the Parliamentary Forum on Youth Affairs for the next five years to push for the youth agenda as a legislative agenda that they will amplify in the course of their legislation for the next five years,” Mumbere said.

Mumbere said that in an event that young people are calling for support they should not be staggering but know the MPs that they must get in touch with those who have committed themselves to advocate for the youth in Parliament.

Mumbere noted that as a platform they bring together youth advocacy platforms to voice out their issues and amplify their voices on different issues.

“Key among the issues are issues related to ineffective participation in leadership, planning and budgeting processes where youth are not effectively participating; we are now in the planning period but the youth are nowhere,” Mumbere explained.

He observed that the platform is there to champion the issues for the youth by first of all building capacities of the youths so that they can ably go and participate from an informed point of view.

The youth noted that currently, there is a mismatch of the skill sets provided visa vie the development needs.

“Government is asking for investors to come and invest in Uganda but what skills do they find here, they find people that studied irrelevant topics and lessons in their institutions of learning. Can government strategically reshape the curriculum such that the skills provided are in line with the development needs,” the youth noted.

The meeting also discussed the need to advocating for development of agriculture skills among the youth in schools as well as the land rights for the youth.