The International Labour Organization (ILO), through its Youth Entrepreneurship Facility and the University of Dar es Salaam Entrepreneurship Centre (UDEC), have jointly pledged to support the first Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW) 2012, to be held simultaneously in Tanzania Mainland and Zanzibar from November 12 to 18.

The event hosted by Zanzibar Association for Youth Education and Empowerment (ZAYEE), seeks to mobilize millions of Tanzanian youth to embrace entrepreneurship by introducing entrepreneuship initiatives. The event is held under the theme “Amsha Uwezo Wako” (“Awaken Your Potential”).

The ILO said in a press statement that it supports ZAYEE and GEW Tanzania because building strong partnerships and creating entrepreneurship culture is important for a sustained economic growth in Tanzania. Commending on the ILO and UDEC initiative, Mr Omar Said Shaaban, Vice-Chairman and co-founder of ZAYEE said that the endorsement will go a long way to help in creating awareness among the youth.

Jealous Chirove, Chief Technical Advisor of the Youth Entrepreneurship Facility said that one of the main pillars of the project is to integrate entrepreneurship education within the curriculum of the education system in Tanzania. In line with that, ILO is working together with the Ministry of Education, Tanzania Institute of Education and other stakeholders to achieve this goal in primary and secondary schools, starting next year.

“Only then, can we inculcate the culture of entrepreneurship in a more systematic way, which will produce entrepreneurs not necessarily in the short term, but in the medium to long term and help to change attitudes and perceptions towards entrepreneurship among young people?”, he said.

UDEC’s role in the internal market of students is guided by two key objectives, namely Developing General Enterprising Tendencies (GETs) among all students and Motivating students to choose entrepreneurship as a career. The centre has a responsibility of promoting GETs among students in order to change the mindset of graduates to be more enterprising so as to increase their chances of being employed including self employment.

The centre also sensitizes students to choose self employment as a career and empower them to succeed therein. In most cases UDEC works with youth within the university and outside university.

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[photo credit: richardstupart]

tags: ilo, Tanzania