Benson Advocates for Youth Locally and Globally
More than 1 billion young people will enter the job market in the next ten years. Former Educate! Scholar Benson Musabe is dedicated to ensuring that this growing population has the skills necessary to excel in today's rapidly evolving world of work, and he has recently earned the opportunity to share his voice on a global platform.
Since graduating from Educate!’s model in Uganda, Benson has added many titles to his list: entrepreneur, computer programmer, mentor, humanitarian, founder, university student, and now, one of just 17 talented and enterprising young leaders selected for Solutions for Youth Employment (S4YE)’s Youth Advisory Group (YAG).
As an initiative of the World Bank and partners, S4YE is a coalition of “donors, governments, foundations, private sector companies, NGOs, and youth supporting catalytic programs that increase the number of young people engaged in productive work.”
Since we last caught up with Benson in early 2019, he has continued to provide marginalized youth with the opportunities and resources to learn basic information and communication technology (ICT) skills. Most recently, his nonprofit, the Musabe Foundation, has developed e-learning resources in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. To date, the foundation’s Uganda Computer Aid (UCAid) Project has provided 1,440 young people in the rural Rwenzori region of Western Uganda with free technology workshops and mobile outreach initiatives. Benson hopes this work will not only benefit students in his community but also students across the country and beyond.
Now, Benson is one step closer to realizing this goal. As a member of S4YE’s Youth Advisory Group, Benson will provide important input on the design of S4YE and the World Bank’s youth employment programs, engage in S4YE's knowledge work on the youth employment agenda, and gain exposure and visibility in an international network. Benson’s mission to strengthen youth economic opportunity aligns closely with S4YE’s belief that young people should shape the policies that impact them.
In addition to YAG, Benson contributes to several advisory groups, is a member of his university’s Google Developer Student Club, and is part of an extensive network of Educate! graduates. In the future, he intends to develop a skill-building hub and mobile ICT labs to reach youth in remote communities, urban slums, and the refugee camps in the Rwenzori region.
Benson credits his experience with Educate! in helping to grow these connections and in fostering the knowledge and 21st-century skills that he now incorporates into his own initiatives:
“I am leveraging my networks to further broaden my impact and find opportunities to create lasting change in my region.”
