Comedian Emmanuel Otim alias Napoleone Ehmah last year launched a project dubbed Empowering Youths Through Talent Building (EYOTAB). The project aimed at training and uplifting youth from Lira and Teso in the creative industry. According to Napoleone, his annual show in Soroti has attracted fans from Teso and Lira. After the shows, many youths approached him with different questions. He learned that some of them had tried comedy and others had tried music, but none had made it to Kampala as Napoleone, who hails from the same region.
Having given it some thought, Napoleone said he came up with the idea of empowering them for the job market, and he then wrote a proposal to the MasterCard Foundation, which accepted his proposal. In the past year, the project has been running, and some positive feedback has been received from 150 participants from many different fields, such as comedy, music, photography, graphic design, and videography.
According to Napoleone, the founder and head of EYOTAB, the project has attracted big media houses who want to collaborate with EYOTAB to create comedy content for their TV shows. “We are about to sign our first contract to create content for big media houses whose names we are yet to reveal,” Napoleone said. He explained that the video footage of Ugandan climate activist Faith Akoriot hugging a tree for 16 hours was captured by EYOTAB students, which gave them a big boost in confidence.
Comedy class students have already been booked to perform at entertainment events. On the other hand, Alexandary and Mosh from the music class already have songs titled Like You and Asaja, and the content is already available on the project’s YouTube channel, http://www.youtube.com/eyotab.
The project is funded by MasterCard but is supervised by the Christian Children’s Outreach Ministry (CCORM). Founded to create an environment in which young people can succeed in life, CCORM is an all-inclusive community-based organization. EYOTAB prepares participants for the job market in the Creative Industries through graduation and training.
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