Programmes
Since the founding of the Youth Harvest Foundation in 2002, empowering the youth has been our business.
We are organising our activities in 4 main programme areas that are strongly interconnected.
Education
Developing our youth all starts with education. Our education programmes are aimed at promoting 100 percent access of children to primary and secondary education. But it doesn’t stop at there. We want them to stay in school and we want them to achieve successful learning outcomes.
As we are situated in the north of Ghana, teenage pregnancy and child marriage are some of the factors that can have a negative influence on the school cycle of youth.
Especially girls who fail for their school exams will risk a future without further options than to marry at a very young age. In order to prevent this from happening, the YHFG is running various campaigns and programmes to stop child marriage and to organise remedial school classes for girls who failed to pass their exams.
Adolescents' sexual and reproductive health and rights
The lack of comprehensive sexual health education and services causes another series of potential risks for adolescents. When facing problems like sexual violence, sexually transmitted infections (STIs), teenage pregnancies, or unsafe abortions, chances are high that youth will drop out of school.
Therefore the YHFG has built up a broad range of programmes supporting and promoting the sexual and reproductive health of young people by providing appropriate education and supporting rights-based advocacy activities
Entrepreneurial & Employable Skills
Finishing secondary school level is not a guarantee for a safe future. But it certainly offers more opportunities than without an education.
Not everybody can go to university, therefore our skills and entrepreneur programmes are aimed at providing step up opportunities for young people to build up working experience and entrepreneurial skills. So they can take care of themselves, and their future children.
Agri-business and Market System Development
In the northern region of Ghana, 90 percent of the population are peasant farmers. Many of them have difficulties to earn a reasonable income. Our agri-business and market access programmes are focused on helping to improve the farmers’ economic situation.
The rationale for this is that it then links in with our other priority areas such as education and health; if the farmers improve their economic situation, they are more likely to educate their children and there will be less need for child marriage for economic reasons.