An entire generation of youth in southern Africa is in crisis. In Swaziland alone, a country smaller than New Jersey and with a total population of one million people, UNICEF estimates there will be 120,000 orphaned children by 2010 – representing 22% of all children in Swaziland.

Kuluma is a project of YouthAssets’ whose mission is to empower youth in southern Africa, particularly those heading households, by engaging them with information and communication technologies to connect them to the knowledge they need to broaden their choices for the future. With this urgent need to support orphans, traditionally strong communities are being strained beyond capacity. Although their parents have died, youth are encouraged to stay on their homestead to continue to claim their house and land – a very valuable asset for food production and shelter. However, they remain isolated from support networks and resources without an adult caretaker and are responsible for raising their brothers and sisters on their own. A mechanism is needed to reduce their isolation and connect them to the resources they need.

Kuluma proposes to take advantage of the mobile phone network in Swaziland, our pilot country, to connect youth who are heading households and give them a voice.  Connecting small groups of youth via teleconferences, youth will have the opportunity to tell their story and give and receive support from their peers. Each group will receive a collective fund to manage and to decide collaboratively how to use the money (distribute the funds evenly, use it as capital to start small businesses, or any other idea) to support themselves sustainably and effectively. YouthAssets will learn from the youth themselves, and will use this knowledge to develop scalable strategies to reach more of the 10,000 orphan headed-households within Swaziland.

Please select Kuluma for USAID's Development 2.0 Challenge and help YouthAssets to support youth headed-households in Africa. Thank you.

In addition:

This summer YouthAssets conducted a nationwide survey in rural Swaziland, interviewing youth ages 13 to 24 who have no adults in their homestead and are taking care of their siblings on their own. We partnered with at least thirty people within the country including three Swazi’s who conducted the survey, national government officials, local leaders, and the youth themselves.  

The youth proved to be resourceful, innovative, and generous. Already a third of the young people we interviewed already owned phones. Even without electricity, all of the youth we interviewed knew where they would charge their phones and how they would buy airtime. They already used their phone as a critical lifeline as they called community members for food, called working siblings in town for money and emotional support, and called their neighbors when in danger.  

In the next two weeks, YouthAssets is following up with 12 of the young people who had phones to learn how they are doing as well as learn more about how they use their phones. You can follow us on Twitter @YouthAssets to see how these lovely young people are doing and what they have to say.

Locations