Abstract:
One of government’s initiatives to boost youths economically was by funding youth group
enterprises through the program called Youth Enterprise Development Funds (YEDF) and
Uwezo fund. Though, the initiative was rolled out official in 2007 with an aim of creating job
opportunities for young people. In early 2016 Kenyan youths were reported to account for
35% of total population but representing 67% of the general unemployment population out of
40% unemployment percent in Kenya. In Uasin Gishu it is reported that youth unemployment
remains to be high with more than 600,000 youths unemployed compared to other counties.
In order to understand why most of government funded youth group enterprises were not
creating more jobs as intended. The study was guided by four research objectives that follow;
establish the influence of group leadership skills on the performance of government funded
youth group enterprises; determine the contribution of group entrepreneurship skills on the
performance of government funded youth group enterprises; find out the role of group
entrepreneurial resources on the performance of government funded youth group enterprises
and lastly find out the role of group entrepreneurial vision on the performance of government
funded youth group enterprises in Turbo Sub-County Uasin Gishu County. The study adopted
a descriptive survey research design; used purposive, stratified random and random sampling
to get respondents for the study. The Data was collected by both primary and secondary
sources. Inferential statistics were used to make generalization about the study; Simple and
multiple linear regression was used to show how independent variables related to dependent
(Youth group enterprise performance). When multiple regression analysis was used it gave
R= 0.553 and sig. 000 meaning all independent variables had a significant relationship with
dependent variable. From the study we can conclude that though majority of youth group
enterprises 78% are not doing well in terms of assets, profitability and growth in terms of
number of employees in order to serve the purpose that government funds were intended for.
It was clear that entrepreneurial resources have significant effect on youth group enterprise
performance since it could explain 50.1% variation on Youth group Enterprise performance.
It was also found out that social networking, good customer relationship, more trainings,
regular entrepreneurial campaigns are necessary for youth groups to achieve their goals
