 The agricultural sector presents many opportunities for youth to engage and benefit from gainful employment. Unfortunately, many youths tend to shun agriculture due to the risks involved, intensive nature and low profitability among others. In Uganda, FAO, together with the Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries and the Ministry of Gender, Labor and Social Development, have launched the second round of the Youth Inspiring Youth in Agriculture initiative, YEA, to identify and recognize successful youth agripreneurs from across the country. Uganda is now currently approximately 42 million Ugandans and 76 percent of this population is broader age of 30. And this comes with a challenge of unemployment, lack of enough jobs because many young people who are being churned through universities don't actually access these jobs, they don't irrigate these jobs. So what we are trying to do is we started the YEA because the YEA initiative is an initiative or an approach that can show that you can actually do something in agriculture. We are trying to present agriculture or business as another option. We want to solve the problem of unemployment of youth. There are so many youths outside there that are unemployed and they think agriculture is not a way to go, but we are convincing them, we are rallying them. The Youth Inspiring Youth in Agriculture initiative was rolled out in three phases, each with a specific goal. We identify young people through a competitive process where we roll out a call for applications. Young people over the country apply, they can access these application forms through District Production Office, through our online website platform, then they can apply, then we do what we call the screening of the applications, then we shortlist, then we have judges who go and validate the kind of work, whether it is actually in existence, then from there we get the final champions. My involvement as you put properly, I have been for this round too as a chief judge and this meant that I have to look at the intricacies of the competition, the details and including the design of the instruments that select the youth, including looking at what they are doing on the ground. Myself, I've seen what the youth are doing and I am able to testify that the transformation is already on the rail and the rail is moving forward. When we came back from that training, they were educating us on how we can add value to certain things, I was motivated. Competing was very beautiful, I must say I was actually the youth, the champion president for the third cohort and it was basically mindset, mindset training that went through, it was what caught my attention, let alone the rigorous exercises, the drills, the morning drills that we have to go through, for me it was the mindset change. If we're able to tune and change our mindset and start to think different, that means we start to do things different and that means we grow different, we take our whole another five steps forward once we have a mindset change, other than the small two steps that we're going with now. Over 270 youth agripreneurs were selected and awarded at district and regional levels. Among these, the best 35 were awarded as national youth champions. The award package included youth peer-to-peer support activities, opportunities to attend technical training, exhibitions of agricultural products as well as policy dialogues related to youth employment in agriculture. Training involves institutional development and agribusiness development in general. When we're talking about bookkeeping, we're talking about group formation, strengthening the group because it is very difficult to access government resources when you're not in groups. So we ask them to be in groups and the group must be very strong and then financial literacy and everything we train them. As the world evolves, the needs to adapt and innovate rises. In order to keep up with the developing societies, programs like YIYA are vital in levelling the playing field to make sure everyone gets a fair shake through realizing their full potential. I've gotten a network of people that are assisting me, especially in seeking for maybe more support from the big organizations. I was able to get the networking connection to the different youth who are doing different great activities and then also I was able to gain the knowledge and skill for instance when we went for the farmers leadership center, we were able to acquire some knowledge and skill and then that mindset changed. Equal opportunity is high on the list of goals that the program has and thus a spotlight was pointed on the aspect of gender. Out of the 15 permanent staff that I have, seven Arab boys, then the rest are female, those are permanent staff. Then most of the casual workers, in fact that one is mixed. You're involved with the women and youth in two different activities but along the group casual chain and this one includes the farming, it includes the agro processing, the post harvest handling and then also it includes the valley addition. With so much done so far, there is still so much more left to be done. Youth need to be our partners, they need to be the partners of the government of Uganda going forward in terms of the vision that the government has for the agriculture sector and for the nation as a whole, right? We can't consider them simply as a beneficiary, no. They are active participants in the creation of their own futures and the future of the agriculture sector and the future of the country. So the government and development organizations aren't doing something for the youth but we are working with the youth to help them take their work and their investment and their business further.