YMCAs across Africa are providing young people with opportunities to improve their livelihoods. This is translated to provision of quality education, vocational training, and skills development including in entrepreneurship. Our aim is to empower young people with practical experience and knowledge to succeed in today’s modern work environment. The Economic Renaissance component consists of initiatives that address youth unemployment and underemployment in Africa. Specific interventions vary from education-based activities within vocational training facilities to entrepreneurship mind-set building, crossing over to small business incubation and acceleration initiatives.

For youth to be economically empowered, they need to be equipped not only with finances, but mental and cognitive capacities that will ensure successful set up and running of their enterprises. Hence, YMCA initiated capacity building process takes youth thorough a process of self-awareness, business opportunity identification, analysis and business plan development, linkages to finance (both equity and debt) and mentoring post access to finance to ensure successful application and management of the finance for enterprise growth. A critical factor within this process is the Vocational Training Centres that various YMCAs in Africa own and operate

In Eastern Africa, YMCAs are running 19 vocational training centres in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Tanzania. In West Africa, the Movement is operating 8 vocational training centres in Ghana, Nigeria, the Gambia and Togo. YMCAs in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Madagascar facilitate vocational training for young people, although they do not own training centres.