The Afrinspire Young Leaders Conference 2017 was held in July in Mbarara in south Uganda.
Thirty six delegates came from Uganda, Burundi and South Sudan as well as the UK team of seven, with reporting in from a Tanzanian satellite conference of young people in Dar es Salam. Refugees from Congo and Burundi were also delegates. This was the fifth annual young leaders conference and the theme was 'Reaching Your Potential'. We spent time discussing and
analysing the various projects for employment creation which have been started by delegates. Over twenty projects have been created by delegates by accessing the AYL Fund over the past
four years. We heard reports from these projects and worked on the challenges faced and their solutions. We considered sustainability and resilience and how to build these into our projects. The delegates received training in record-keeping and for the personal growth element of the conference they practiced coaching and mentoring. One outcome was to strengthen our peer review and mentoring across the network. During the conference there was a secondary activity to discover where we are going. The UK
team interviewed every delegate to gather feedback on the Afrinspire Young Leaders movement, the AYL Fund and the AYL Conference itself. There is no doubt from the buzz at the conference that so much is going on but the aim was to understand what we have created! and how to develop this for the most significant impact in the future. Afrinspire Young Leaders was first described as a 'Movement' during this conference.
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