Skills Acquisition and Employability Through Volunteering by Displaced Youth in Uganda, 2019-2022

This archive contains the full dataset of the project "Skills acquisition and employability through volunteering by displaced youth in Uganda", also known as Refugee Youth Volunteering Uganda (RYVU), an interdisciplinary research project funded by the UK’s Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) and Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). The archive includes the project's quantitative and qualitative data collected in four locations in Uganda (Kampala city, and the refugee settlements of Bidibidi, Nakivale and Rwamwanja).

This project investigates the capacity of volunteering to reduce inequalities experienced by displaced youths in Uganda and to build their skills and employability. Forced displacement has become one of the most intractable challenges of the 21st century, with 65.6 million people displaced worldwide at the end of 2016 - a number which is predicted to rise further in the coming years. 1.4 million of these refugees are currently seeking refuge in Uganda, fleeing from conflicts in the Central African countries of South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, and Somalia to the east. The majority of these refugees are children, and so building the skills and employability of the many young people (understood in this research as aged 15 - 25) - caught up in this crisis is critical not only to their own future prospects, but to the long-term stability of their host country and region. Often, however, economic and other inequalities will exclude young refugees from formal schooling and wider opportunities for skills acquisition; while they will also frequently "fall through the cracks" of humanitarian programming. Many, though, are engaged in volunteering, a practice increasingly identified with building skills and enhancing employability. Thus, the aim of this research is to develop a new conceptual framework and produce a body of data and evidence for critically analysing whether volunteering by displaced youths in Uganda helps their skills acquisition and employability and reduces the inequalities they experience. The project will take an interdisciplinary (Youth Studies, Volunteering Studies, Refugee Studies, Urban Studies and Development Studies) mixed method approach, and establish and exploit collaborative links with global South refugee NGOs, volunteers and leading global volunteering and development actors. Fieldwork will be conducted in four case study regions - Kampala city, North Western Uganda, South Uganda, where two of the populations are in the same district, and South West Uganda - and proceed through the following three phases. In Phase 1, the research team will carry out a series of workshops, key informant interviews and field visits in order to build stakeholder engagement, refine and confirm the impact plan, and establish an initial typology of forms and understandings of volunteering to inform the large-scale quantitative survey in phase 2. In Phase 2, the research team will design, develop, pilot and launch a large quantitative survey of young refugees involved in volunteering. Preliminary analysis of the data arising from this survey will inform the questions and focus of phase 3. Comprising 6 main activities - participatory mapping, participatory photography, one to one semi-structured interviews, life history interviews, and stakeholder interviews - Phase 3 will deepen our understanding of where and how young refugees volunteer, address the factors shaping volunteering activity, and its impacts on skills acquisition and employability. The main outputs from the project will include 10 international peer-reviewed journal articles; presentations at major national and international conferences; a project website, containing findings, updates and working notes targeted at different audiences; a compendium of policy briefings; a (touring) photographic exhibition (and accompanying booklet), drawing on images solicited in the context of the participatory photography exercise; and a volunteering for skills acquisition and employability toolkit. By developing a conceptual framework and body of data and evidence on the impact of volunteering by displaced youths in Uganda on skills acquisition, employability and inequality, the research will contribute directly to knowledge which supports how creative solutions to meeting the Sustainable Development Goal challenges work with programmes to develop education and skills.

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