Somali Development Centre (SDC) is a non-profit, non-governmental and voluntary humanitarian organization which operates in Somalia. The organization was set up to address the social and economic problems facing youth, children and women.

SDC works to support youth, children, women and refugee people who have low income by offering free education, income generation activities, micro-credit support, empowering through skill trainings, livelihoods, protection, human rights and health care.

The SDC organization has been active in Puntland couple of years, implementing programs with support from the NGOs, agencies and Diasporas. SDC conducts programs in areas within Puntland regions.

SDC’s goal in Puntland is to build a future generation of Puntland leaders by increasing opportunities in education, economic growth, and civic participation for Puntland youth.

 

This report is a compilation of the activities we engaged in during the year. The projects covered so far were carefully thought out and targets set on priority basis. The activities are also in line with the mission and vision of SDC and hopefully will contribute to overall growth of Somalia.

 

Challenges suffered through the year are also documented in the report as are recommendations and conclusions.

 

 PROGRAMME ACHIEVEMENTS

 

I.       YOUTH MOBILISATION AND PARTICIPATION

Activity One: Vocational skills training for youth and women

SDC established youth centres, the centers consists of four departments, namely; Literacy/Numeracy, Computer/IT, Vocational skills/internships and admin/finance Departments.

The objective of these centers is to enhance education and training opportunities for the youth in the region, with emphasis on girls and disadvantaged groups (IDPs, refugees and minorities) and to enhance self-esteem and self–worth of the youth through empowering education and awareness rising on certain issues such as HIV/AIDs and FGM/C.

Current Activities of the Center:

First Department: Vocational Skills

The vocational training program is specially intended for the empowerment of the youth. Its major aim is to provide vocational skills and promote employment opportunities for the graduated trainees. The center awards achievement certificates to the trainees after successful completion of every course. The current training skills are outlined below:

1. Basic Computer course:

The center provides youth with basic computer application courses. These courses are Ms -Windows, Ms-Word, Ms – Excel, Ms -Access, Ms – Power point   and Ms – Publisher. These programs are ordinarily taught in six months.   Sometimes they are taught intensively for 2 or 3 months.

    2. Financial Accounting/Management 

This course consists of bookkeeping and accounting cycle of service and merchandizing business and introduction to management. Its duration is 10 months in which students are expected to master basic accounting skills in Business/public administration. At the end of the course duration, students are given achievement certificates.

   3. Business Skills Education

Business education provides girls quality training including, business English, book-keeping, business mathematics, office management, business Administration and Computer skills.  This course takes six months.

4. Henna/ Hair-Dressing

Henna/hair-dressing course is offered to girls trainees through enterprise-based vocational training. The purpose of this course is to provide trainees coiffure and hair-dressing skills through offering theoretical and practical on-job training basis. The planned course duration is three months. The center selects private beauty Salons to conduct the training inside their premises. In addition, center managements also carries out monitoring and follow ups of training progress.

5. Cookery/ Nutrition

The aim of this course is to offer quality training to cookery and nutrition skills trainees. They are taught how to prepare delicious and nutritious dishes of different varieties of the local cuisines. In addition, they also learn how to make sweets, biscuits, cakes and cookies for the purpose of generating income for their own families. However, the training is aimed to promote job opportunities for the youth and give them self-esteem and self-worth. The duration of this course is six months.

 

Second Department: Literacy/numeracy course

This course is provided to the youth who want to learn the three basics; namely, reading, writing and basic arithmetic. In addition to that, they are also taught other subjects such as: Basic English, environmental science, and health education. These assorted subjects are intended to increase the knowledge and skills of youth up to the level of primary education. After completion the trainees will have opportunities to enroll into the other higher level of education and skills

Activity two: Youth leadership and advocacy training

SDC trained 25 youth leaders on advocacy and leadership, who in turn organized eleven community service activities in Sanaag and haylaan regions – Puntland. Plans are in place for a training of youth leaders in Bossaso beginning February 2016.

During that training participants were equipped the follow areas:

• Skill transfer and Application: It was a significant achievement that the trainees apply the new acquired knowledge into their daily programmes. The trainees emphasized being able to identify the core problem while distinguishing it from the affects or the signs of the problem. Importance of adopting proper facilitation, communication skills while dealing with conflicting groups included areas trainers applied for their daily activities.
• Organizational Management: Provided Organizational Development, Leadership, Networking, Advocacy and Fund Raising Training packages to the training participants in Sanaag and Haylaan regions-Puntland. At the end of the training, the participants were able to identify the weaknesses and strengths of their organizations, and become capable to redefine their organizational mission, vision and set new strategy planning.
• Networking and Advocacy: participants were able to emphasize the constraints they face in terms of networking, and advocacy those were identified as the most impeding factors for most of the youth organizations. The participants were able to set advocacy goals, set policy strategies, and understand the principles of setting advocacy strategies. Youth groups understood the importance of having enhanced information sharing means that will improve the inter-connection between the youth groups. The participants shared ideas over exchanging and sharing information among youth groups.

Activity three: Life skills based education (LSBE) training

Somali Development Centre (SDC) organized a forum in which the agendas on discussion were on various challenges that the youth do face and what ought to be done.

Objectives:

• To empower young people in challenging situations
• To help younger generation from indulging in behavioral risks e.g. drug abuse.
• To address the issues that makes majority of the youth in the region to involve themselves in illegal immigration to far flung countries.
• To create a platform where youth can share ideas, information, experience on specific issue.

 

II.   PEACE BUILDING AND RECONCILIATION

Conflict not only takes human lives, destroys communities and erodes development gains, but also leaves a legacy of fear, hostility, and trauma. Without effective, inclusive peace and reconciliation processes, countries are likely to revert back to violence.

Understanding the underlying conflict dynamics in fragile states is necessary to support effective peacebuilding.

We held an even that we engaged the youth in discussions on reconciliation. The objective was to reach an understanding on peace building understanding as away to support youth roles on peace building process in Puntland regions.

 

During these dialogues the facilitators introduced various aspects and dynamics on peace through dialogue exercise the use of open discussion by asking participants to sit in pairs and have a conversation with each other, face to face.

 

The facilitator chose questions, perhaps ones which preferably reflects on the nature of the day’s module and posed the questions to the group; repeated them several times, giving 10 minutes for the deliberation.

 

In responding to the question, participants focused on conflict from their own surrounding with which they are familiar or they may choose to focus on a general point.

III.      Promoting civic and political participation of youth

 Youth political participation

Youth in Puntland face poverty, barriers to education, multiple forms of discrimination and limited employment prospects and opportunities, they can be a creative force, a dynamic source of innovations, and they have undoubtedly throughout history participated, contributed, and even catalyzed important changes in political systems, power-sharing dynamics and economic opportunities.

 

SDC conducted trainings to increase youth political participation, First we trained a group of 10 young trainers as TOT’s in order to train other youth groups in Puntland regions to increase youth political Protection Programs.

        Outputs two: Ceremonies

• African child day

Puntland children lack adequate shelter, healthcare, education, protection and guidance, Drug abuse is common and many are involved in activities such as pick-pocketing to cover drug costs.

 

SDC Social workers in the field say insecurity, drought and economic hardship have forced an unprecedented number of children on to the streets, which put them vulnerable to child trafficking, exploitation and abuse for these reasons SDC organized voluntarily African Child day held in Galkaiyo and Badhan districts and presented community problems and challenges faced by children this has forced them children which caused children to be in Puntland streets without protection, help.

 

800 people were attended these events, the results was community accepted their roles and government also accepted and each group promised to play his/her role improvement of the situation of the children in Puntland.

·        AWARENESS SESSIONS

GBV awareness campaigns were carried out in the areas that usually records highest prevalence of GBV cases, especially rape and domestic violence.

Awareness raising sessions focused on rape and domestic violence through community discussions on what are the root causes of these issues.

IEC materials with GBV advocacy messages- earlier developed were used during the session and distributed afterward.

·  Forums

50 (15 male and 35 female) people from key GBV stakeholders in region participated community forum organized during 16days of activism. This includes women and youth groups, village committees, religious leaders, elders, police officers, legal aid and director of MOWDAFA.

 

·  Organization of youth study circle on ending violence women

08 February 2016, the SDC organized youth study circle, an interactive session where young people could have discussions with issues that have impact on their lives. The aim of these sessions was to localize the campaign in a more youth friendly way and to engage young people as agents of change. These discussions looked at youth as both victims and perpetrators. Group rape, which always done by young people from same neighborhood took center stage of their debate, One of the concrete outcome for these study circles were youth to organize themselves in order to mobilize their peers and community on the matter.

 

Gaps

• Youth are the future leaders, workers and citizens of their nation, yet in Puntland, they have limited basic education, employment opportunities, and connectedness to civil society.
• Limited fund allocation in Sanaag and Hayland regions.

Recommendations

 

• There is need in Supporting young people to participate in inclusive political processes and democratic practices
• The promotion of young people’s participation and presence in political office and decision-making at all levels (participation of young people -through both elected and non-elected positions)
• Support to young people’s inclusion in decision making and in all levels of development processes