Youth Reintegration Training and Education for Peace: Sierra Leone

Management Systems International (MSI) with funding from USAID/OTI and in coordination with other partners, is implementing a program in Sierra Leone entitled Youth Reintegration Training and Education for Peace (YTREP). The target population is ex-combatant and other war-affected youth who were to be provided with non-formal education activities in reintegration, livelihood skills development, remedial education and basic literacy and numeracy skills as appropriate. This program was seen as the anchor for the Government of Sierra Leone’s disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) program that would engage, track and monitor all registered ex-combatants, and provide as many of them as are willing to participate with this wide range of training. The program is designed to include 40,000 participants, roughly 50% ex-combatants and 50% non-combatants. Efforts were made to begin the program giving priority to locations of highest density of ex-combatants, beginning in the areas near Freetown where most of the ex-combatants were located.