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We study a government program in Uganda designed to help the poor and unemployed become self-employed artisans. The program targeted people ages 16 to 35 in Uganda's conflict-affected north, inviting them to form groups and submit grant proposals to pay for vocational training and business start-up. Funding was randomly assigned, and treatment groups received unsupervised cash grants of $382 per member on average. The government's main aims were to increase incomes and thus also promote social stability. The treatment group invests some of the grant in skills training but most in tools and materials. After four years half practice a skilled trade. Relative to the control group, the program increases business assets by 57%, hours of work by 17%, and earnings by 38%. We see no corresponding impact, however, on individual social cohesion, participation, anti-social behavior, or protest attitudes and participation. Based on individual earnings alone we estimate 30 to 50% annual returns to investment from the program. We also see evidence that the treatment group grow their enterprises and hire labor, extending the employment impacts of the program. Impact levels are similar for treatment men and women, but are qualitatively different for women-both because women begin poorer (meaning the impact is larger relative to their starting point), and because women's enterprises and earnings stagnate without the program but take off after a grant. The patterns we observe-high rates of investment, new business start-up, and returns on investment-are consistent with able but creditconstrained young people.

Corruption and mismanagement of public resources can affect the quality of government services and undermine growth. Can citizens in poor communities be empowered to demand better-quality public investments? We look at whether providing social accountability training and information on project performance can lead to improvements in local development projects. The program we study is unique in its size and integration in a national program. We find that offering communities a combination of training and information on project quality leads to significant improvements in household welfare. However, providing either social accountability training or project quality information by itself has no welfare effect. These results are concentrated in areas that are reported by local officials as more corrupt or mismanaged, suggesting local agents have significant information about where corruption and mismanagement is worse. We show evidence that the impacts come in part from community members increasing their monitoring of local projects, making more complaints to local and central officials and increasing cooperation. We also find modest improvements in people's trust in the central government. The results suggest that government-led, large-scale social accountability programs can strengthen communities' ability to address corruption and mismanagement as well as improve services.

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