Ignite Youth Organisation

Through the Elevate Prize Funding, we plan to scale our work so that by the end of 2023 we would have expanded from 3 cities to 13 cities or towns in Zimbabwe. Our goal is to make our career guidance and holistic youth development services accessible to more underserved communities and youth across the country. The funding will help us increase the number of adult volunteers we have from 90 to 400 (we need an average of 30 adult volunteers in each city or town), and youth leaders from 100 to 650 (we need an average of 50 leaders in each city or town). We also plan to reach more schools, universities and colleges, and increase from 15 schools to 65 schools across the 13 cities (reaching at least 5 schools per city or town) with the aim of increasing our reach from 20,000 youth currently to 65,000 to 100,000 youth by 2023. 

We will also gain tremendously through the powerful mentorship, networking, support and global community that we will gain by being a part of the Elevate Prize.

I was raised by a single mother who worked long hours to provide for my siblings and I, and had less time to interact with me about my career and life ambitions. I was also receiving little to no career guidance at school and I lacked access to career coaching that could help someone who was clueless find a path that was unique to them. 

This is where my purpose to start IGNITE Youth Organisation came from. IGNITE Youth creates and finds opportunities for youth from disadvantaged backgrounds to access career coaching and mentorship services that support their personal growth and develops them into the leaders of today and tomorrow. 

We do this through holistic youth development, during and after-school, mentorship programs that recognise the multi-dimensional nature of the needs of young people. We address the social, physical, mental and economic needs of youth aged 13-25 years in a highly synchronised way that strengthens the whole young person in his or her entirety. 

In the next 5 years, our goals are to reach more than 100,000 youth across the country, to expand to 10+ cities across Zimbabwe and to other African countries namely Zambia and Malawi. 

There are two development challenges we are tackling. These are access to quality education and career resources for youth; and unemployment among youth from underserved communities, where most families earn below $1,90 a day, which is the current poverty headcount ratio in Zimbabwe, according to the World Bank. According to UNFPA, there are over 3,3 million youth aged between 13-25 years in Zimbabwe. 67.7% of these youth stay in rural and peri-urban areas which is roughly more than 2,2 million youth. Youth living in communities of concentrated poverty are more likely to attend schools where the dropout rate is high and test scores are low, and to live in neighbourhoods with higher crime rates. 90% of Zimbabwean youth from underserved communities lack access to career guidance services. 

We provide career coaching through a hybrid of holistic youth development programs across three key programs: 

1. Mentorship which focuses on career coaching to improve employment or entrepreneurial prospects, and hard and essential skills trainings (which include tech skills trainings)
2. Mental and physical health services through access to counselling, and fun and engaging activities (sports and creative arts) 
3. Community and civic engagement for youth to make a positive impact on their communities. 

Our integral approach to youth empowerment recognises the multi-dimensional nature of the needs of youth; hence we seek to address the personal, social, physical, mental and economic needs of young people in a highly synchronised way and that strengthens the whole young person in his or her entirety. Child and youth development is hardly ever linear and is driven by the ecology surrounding the young person. That ecology includes adults, their family, other young people, the environment, social and economic realities, culture, and many more parities. We believe this is one of the reasons our work is unique and disruptive. 

Our purpose-centered approach to career guidance is also unique as it places purpose at the centre of all we do with youth.

We help youth to discover and pursue careers paths that are personally fulfilling to them, and at the same time motivated by a desire to make a difference in their community, nation and world at large. 

This is a core component of our work, that is to help them to think critically, creatively and innovatively about how they can contribute solutions to the problems their communities face, as this ultimately empowers them to become servant leaders and changemakers.

We have reached over 20,000 youth through our online and offline events, workshops, trainings and seminars. We run 7 youth programs that offer a holistic approach to a young persons development. Working in three cities, Harare, Bulawayo, and Mutare, has also helped us to achieve impact and reach more youth. We have also held Career Guidance Workshops and events in 15 schools. Targeting schools and colleges has also allowed us to reach many youth. Through our partner network made up of other organisations in the youth empowerment space such as the Youth Empowerment and Transformation Trust and Inspired Learning, we have managed to gain expert and mentor support, adult volunteers, and one-on-one support for our youth. By partnering with other universities, organisations and companies, we have helped our youth to access  scholarships, fellowships, internships, and job placements. We have also started working with the Ministry of Youth and the Ministry of Education in Zimbabwe to pitch our concept of creating Ignite Youth Hubs or Clubs in Schools. Through training more than 100 Youth Volunteer Leaders, we have had enough manpower to help us execute and roll out our programs in the 3 cities.