1.1 Targets
• To engage 25 Trainers to carry out the demonstrations on the ground.
• To train 2000 youth entrepreneurs to be engaged directly in communities.
• To reach 1 million households in Kenya with life changing devises by the project.
• To directly impact over 5 million people with the project both directly and indirectly.
• To replicate and scale up the project to more other African countries

2. The Challenge
Demographics: Young people in Kenya form 60% of the country’s available total labor force . Only 25% of the total 500,000 young persons in the country that join the labor market each year end up securing actual jobs. 67% of all those who are unemployed are young people of below 30 years while 45% are below 24 years 70% of the total population of Kenya is aged below 30 years which is defined as youth. Since majority of this are unemployed, they are dependent on their parents or other illegal sources for a livelihood and income. Kenya is becoming predominantly a young nation with an increase on the young age group. Many of the young people are literate. A civil strife is in the offing if a deliberate measure is not undertaken to resolve the unemployment challenge among the youth.

Food, Energy Crisis and Deforestation of the MAU: Kenya is currently undergoing an food and energy crisis with nationwide electric power rationing. Over 20% of the population is starving from hunger. The devastation and human destruction on forests in Kenya especially the MAU forest has caused un–imaginable reduction on the regional water catchment resulting to less rainfall, drought and the current energy crisis. Millions of Kenyans are common for the usage of wood charcoal for domestic and commercial use. This has led to a huge forest cover diminishing and a contribution to the global warming.
Kerosene Use: Millions of rural families in Kenya use kerosene lamps to light up their homes. Kerosene is clear and looks more like water. In rural Kenya it is sold in containers which can easily be opened by children. Thousands of children die each year because of accidentally drinking kerosene.

The smoke and fumes from Kerosene hurt the eyes, cause coughing and other nasty diseases like asthma, bronchitis, and cataracts. It is said that Kerosene smoke from lanterns in a house is equivalent to smoking 40 cigarettes per day. Fires caused by Kerosene spread quickly and can burn down a whole house.

The Project: Young energy entrepreneurs Kenya project will supply solar devices to replace the use of Kerosene Lamps. Solar energy is the favourite in Kenya due to the 12 hour supply of sunlight which will convert the sun rays into electricity that can be used for heating, lighting and charging mobile phones.

The youth will also be used to manufacture environment friendly charcoal briquettes that discourages the use of wood and thus saving trees. An urgent intervention is now required to save the environment, save families from the dangers of kerosene use and transform and sustain livelihoods of communities in Kenya.

4. Proposed Activities
1. A Rework the World Workshop in Nairobi
This workshop will bring together partners within the framework of this project to learn through the various initiatives that will be rolled out. An orientation of the rework concept will also be interactively shared among the partners. The workshop is expected to harness the different priorities of donor agencies to go towards supporting the youth. Selected best practices will be invited to show case their work that has potential for replication in turn creating employment for the youth. The breakout sessions will be thematic action points that can be invested in to create employment. The workshop will act as a catalyst to create linkages on what the youth are doing and the priorities of the donors and other investors. 50% of the participants are expected to be youth with positive projects on the ground, investors, donors, private sector, government, and other professionals. The Rework the World initiators from Tallberg Foundation and YES Inc., will contribute to stir the process. The outcome of the workshop will be clear framework of engagement between the aid agencies and investors with the Young entrepreneurs.
The project takes place against the backdrop of Rework the World, an open initiative to boost viable initiatives that drive sustainability and create youth green jobs, developed in partnership by YES Inc, with its youth led networks in fifty-five developing countries, and Tällberg Foundation, with its high level global networks of decision makers. The vision is, by 2012, to have two million young people engaged in meaningful work through financially and ecologically sustainable enterprises and green employment opportunities.
The effort is grounded upon the history of Youth Employment Summits (YES Summits), which began in Alexandria, Egypt in 2002, launching a decade long campaign for youth employment, particularly in the developing world. The Summits then convened in Mexico (2004), Kenya (2006), Azerbaijan (2008).
Since 1981 the Tällberg Foundation has brought leaders together from around the world to discuss emerging issues. Beginning 2005, the Tällberg Forum became a yearly gathering of 500 business leaders, decision makers, scientists, artists and entrepreneurs to learn from, reflect upon and influence the thinking of global leadership on strategic issues of common interest. The Rework the World initiative takes the YES campaign’s ambition to the next level, focusing on sustainable ventures with benchmark results. The initiative began in 2008 and builds towards the 5th YES Summit, June 2–5, 2010 in Dalarna, Sweden.
2. The Young Solar Entrepreneurs Challenge
Aim: To create youth distribution networks to sell life changing Sustainable Solar devises to 1 million households in Kenya. The project targets to extinguish 1 million kerosene lamps in rural households in Kenya.
YES Kenya country network will work with its existing youth organisations across the country to set up distribution networks and supply chains led by youth to sell the solar devises to the end users in communities. The partnership involves YES Kenya and D-light Designs which is a solar device manufacturing company. The partnership seeks to work with a financial institution for financial credit to the youth, Training for skills transfer to the youth who will supply the devises in communities. The outcome of this will be 2000 young entrepreneurs engaged, communities empowered and the environment saved.
3. Renewable energy systems
Aim: To produce Environement friendly Charcoal briquettes, Compact Biogas Systems and Improved cooking stoves for home and communal use. This venture will involve YES Kenya and Joint Environemental Techniques (JET) to train Youth as trainers to transfer the skills of manufacturing charcoal briquettes from all kinds of dry biomas, create compact biogas systems which uses kitchen and food waste as feed stock for gas production and improved cooking stoves which uses only 150 – 250 grams of charcoal to cook three foods simulatneosly.

4. The Partners
YES Kenya is a multi stakeholder network of young people in Kenya committed to creating sustainable livelihoods for youth using the seven E’s (Employment Creation, Employability, Entrepreneurship, Equity, Environemental Sustainability, Education, ) The network covers all the 8 provinces of Kenya and is a member of the larger national youth movement with its membership in all the districts in Kenya. YES Kenya has set up a commercial enterprise to deal with the enterprise venture within this framework while the organisation will deal with partnerships and networks, and training.

D-LIGHT: This organisation makes lanterns that can be used for up to 15 – 20 hours; almost a whole day!These lanterns have been created to help us replace the use of kerosene lanterns in our homes. They provide us with safe and bright light. Every Dlight product comes with its own solar panel and it is used to charge it during the day.

JET: Joint Environemental Techniques (JET) is jointly owned by a group of Swedish investors and the founders of Appropriate Rural Technology Institute (ARTI). JET was established with the goal of bridging the gap between urban consumer energy needs and the non-availability of affordable, sustainable and reliable energy alternatives. JET commercially utilizes scientific researched, tested and rewarded renewable energy solutions. These solutions provide not only energy solutions but also employment creation, income generation and environemental protection.

5. Roll out Strategy
Using its existing grassroots networks, YES Kenya will host a Training for Trainers to equip youth leaders with the appropriate skills in the two main ventures as appropriated in this proposal.
Both JET and D-light will provide the technical training modules that will be applied during this training sessions. The trainers will then be in charge of the field training sessions that will be conducted in 20 sites across Kenya for youth in communities who will be the main entrepreneurs to get the technical instructions on supplying the products and devises to the end user consumer market.

6. Outcome
This project is anticipated to achieve a number of deliverables;
i. More young people will be engaged on practical green social entrepreneurship opportunities
ii. The communities will be empowered to adopt alternative energy for their various use
iii. A partnership framework between decision makers and youth on how to develop Kenya
iv. A safer environment
v. The youth participation in practical employment opportunities in the communities