Relationship between Awareness and Uptake of Youth Enterprise Development Fund in Kajiado County, Kenya

A research project submitted to the school of humanities and social sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the award of the degree of master of public policy and administration of Kenyatta University. September, 2018. ; Entrepreneurship is a near practical solution to the ever increasing joblessness among the youth. Efforts to engage Kenyan youths successfully in this direction has however remained a mirage as some of the monies channeled for this purpose through the YEDF is not taken up as expected. The net result is an escalation of youth unemployment aggravating social evils like crime, increased drug use and abuse etc. The purpose of this study was to establish the relationship between youth awareness and uptake of YEDF in Kajiado County. The specific objectives were to find out the sources of funds for youth enterprises in Kitengela location, investigate the levels of youth awareness on YEDF, analyze the uptake of YEDF and to establish the challenges that hinder the youth from accessing YEDF in Kitengela location. The study population was all youth owned enterprises in Kitengela location, Kajiado County. The sample size was 45. Stratified sampling was used whereby the researcher used a census of all the 8 enterprises that have benefited from YEFD and purposively another 8 youth owned enterprises.10 youths and 2 YEDF officials were purposively selected for the focus group discussions. The researcher used questionnaires and interview schedules to collect data. Descriptive research design was used in the study. Data analysis was done using both descriptive and inferential statistics for quantitative data by use of Statistical Package of Social Scientists Program (SPSS) and content analysis for qualitative data. Presentation of data was done using Frequency distribution tables, percentages, pie charts and graphs. The Pearson’s product moment was used to establish the strength and direction of the relationship between the two variables. The findings were that the correlation between awareness ...