| dc.description.abstract | The purpose of this study was to find out the influence of youth enterprise development
fund on the growth of youth groups projects in Kenya but more specifically in Gatundu
North District. The government of Kenya through the Ministry of Youth affairs and
sports has tried to economically empower the youths through various projects like the
youth empowerment marshal plan, the national youth policy and the establishment of
Youth Enterprise Development Fund in 2006. However these efforts do not seem to bear
much fruits in as far as youth empowerment is concerned. This necessitated carrying out
this study with four objectives in mind i.e. to establish the extent to which
entrepreneurship training through YEDF influence growth of youth group projects, to
determine the extent to which accessibility of YEDF funds influence youth group
projects; to examine the extent to which sufficiency of YEDF funds influence youth
group projects and to establish how repayment of YEDF funds influence youth group
projects. The study employed descriptive survey design for the purpose of describing the
state of affairs as they were. The study involved a sample of 132 youths drawn from a
population of 200 youths who were members of 20 youth groups each having an average
of 10 members. Data was collected from respondent using questionnaire. The study
instruments were validated prior to actual data collection by close consultation with
research experts and peer students. 10 youths who were members of 5 youths groups from
a neighboring Gatundu south district were used for the pilot testing. The scores obtained
from the pilot respondents were correlated to determine the instruments reliability.
Obtained raw data were systematically organized, coded, analyzed through descriptive
statistics and finally presented using percentages and frequency distribution tables. The
research findings of this study showed that entrepreneurship training by YEDF,
sufficiency of YEDF funds, accessibility of YEDF funds and the repayment of the funds
all had positive influence on the growth of youth group projects. The study recommends
that the Government through YEDF should enhance and invest more on entrepreneurship
training to the youths before any loans are given to them either in groups or as
individuals. This was so since from the findings 80% the 123 sampled youths who
reported having not been trained on entrepreneurship reported problems in repayment of
their loans which could be attributed to poor business performance due to lack of
management skills. The Government through YEDF should come up with a legal
mechanism on how to ensure loans extended to youths are paid back on time since from
the study repayment of funds faced challenges emanating from lack of legal mechanism
on how to recover the funds disbursed to youth groups. | en_US |
