From YES to Success: How USAID and Aga Khan Foundation Empower Youth in Central Asia

After completion of the two-week program equipped with newfound confidence, Benazir presented her business idea: a neighborhood café offering everything from hot dogs and ice cream to tea and lemonade.

The YES program seeks to promote job readiness, employment, and self-employment of adolescents and youth across target geographies, in partnership with government schools, civil society and the private sector.

Leaving her career as a computer science teacher to raise her four children, Benazir from the remote Gorno Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast (GBAO) of Tajikistan felt the growing need to support her family in the face of economic hardship. Inspired by the lack of basic amenities in her neighborhood, she and her husband, who was also unemployed at that time, took a bold step and opened a small grocery shop in 2020. This venture not only provided essential goods but also became a lifeline for their family during tough times.

“Living in a remote town like Khorugh, GBAO does not provide many opportunities in terms of employment, so people tend to leave their home country and migrate. We wanted to stay and were pushing to find ways to grow.”

Driven by a newfound entrepreneurial spirit after opening a small grocery shop, Benazir heard about an opportunity with the YES program and applied.

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To empower youth, build a pipeline of entrepreneurs, and promote a culture of entrepreneurship, Local Impact, funded by USAID and AKF, designed and piloted the Youth Entrepreneurship and Employability Skills (YES) program in 2021 in Tajikistan and the Kyrgyz Republic. Following a successful pilot, the program was scaled up in 2022.