Full details are available here:  https://chuffed.org/project/innovate4jobssl

We have recently teamed up with partners from Imperial College, London, the Royal Academy of Engineers and the Sierra Leone Institution of Engineers to deliver a programme to raise the standard of engineering education and practice at the University of Sierra Leone. While delivering this programme we discovered a tremendous appetite for self-employment, startup and entrepreneurship among the University students, staff and young people outside of the university. We also realised that entrepreneurship is treasured among the young because the lack of employment opportunities is triggering the Sierra Leonean desire to create their own success stories.  The problem is that while there is an improving standard of higher education, years of endemic misfortune has almost extinguished the employment opportunities for young people. We quickly realised that business start-up is vitally important since all the training and education in the world cannot bear fruit if there are no jobs to go to and no infrastructure in place to create businesses.  We are raising £50,000 to equip and run an innovation/startup hub for young engineers in Freetown which will be based in a building donated by the University of Sierra Leone. We have budgeted to fund the Centre for two years with this crowdfund.