Mauritius: YUVA ensures the sustained well-being of children and young people, especially those who are the most vulnerable

YUVA works with families, communities, and partners to ensure that children and young people enjoy good health, are educated for life, experience love of parents and their surroundings, and are cared for and protected. YUVA serves all children and young people, regardless of religion, race, ethnicity, or gender.

YUVA aims to ensure Quality Education, Good Health, Empowerment and Employment for young people through its programs. Its goal is to break the cycle of poverty and ensure a bright future of children and young people of Mauritius.

• YUVA launched the first-ever social enterprise in Mauritius, called the YUVA Leadership Academy.
• The current programs delivered by the YUVA Leadership Academy are as follows:

1. Certificate in Leadership For Social Change
2. Certificate in The Entrepreneurial Mindset
3. Certificate in Moral, Civic & Sex Education

• YUVA has tied up with US’ Stephen Business School.
• All programs are MQA-registered and HRDC-refunded.
• YUVA sells (at an affordable fee of Rs 1,000) empowerment programs to the young people of Mauritius and then reinvests the money they make back into the local community to support the education, health and employment of Mauritian families living under poverty line.

YUVA’s projects directly benefit 175 people (116 women and 59 men). It reaches 712 indirect beneficiaries (318 women and 394 men) and has more than 14,000 online beneficiaries. YUVA is Self – funded

YUVA believes in the saying that “What gets measured gets done”. It works with the Statistics Mauritius and independent auditors to measure specific results as part of their program. Empowering young people means equipping them with the skills, knowledge and social responsibility which will help them become agents of change. To measure progress in this area, YUVA uses data collection and analysis to identify the percentage of people with the ability to stand on their own feet.

In its initial stage, YUVA started donating money and materials extensively to its beneficiaries and this resulted into a scarcity of resources. Many of its beneficiaries misused the tools which were offered by YUVA. To solve these problems, YUVA consulted local and international experts and conducted numerous field visits and lived with the beneficiaries for several days in order to understand the root problem. It developed context appropriate solutions informed by user needs and brought several amendments.

YUVA has started developing leaders (among beneficiaries) who have adopted good governance, entrepreneurs who have created jobs, and innovators that have developed lasting solutions to the root causes of Mauritius’ problems.  After 1 year of implementing all its pioneering steps, YUVA won the Africa NGO Leadership Award 2017. In 2018, YUVA again won the Africa NGO Leadership Award 2018 for continuously improving its initiatives in order to establish sustainability.