Empowering Young Graduates Through One Village One Product Based SME in KPK. Pathway to Job Creation And Entrepreneurship

Abstract

Unemployment among the youth in the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwan (KPK) is a major issue, with young graduates being structurally, financially, and skill wise disadvantaged in securing a job or starting an enterprise. This paper formulates a conceptual model that incorporates one village, one product (OVOP) postulates and development of Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) in promoting youth employment and entrepreneurship. The framework based on the literature findings refers to such key independent variables as employment and entrepreneurial difficulties, the role of SMEs, OVOP adoption, and institutional, financial, and skill-related support and views economic and social empowerment as a mediation which translates such interventions into high-quality employment. The paper has brought out the theoretical and practical relevance of exploiting localized and value added production to enhance economic and social empowerment among young graduates. The suggested framework can provide policy makers, development agencies, and SME developers with the means of planning interventions to contribute to the advancement of youth entrepreneurship, unemployment reduction, and the empowerment of local economies. The future study is suggested to be carried out under mixed methods where both qualitative and quantitative measures will be applied to empirically confirm the given relationships.