Career Talks, Skill Mastery and Podcasts for youth in Uganda

Bakash Media Foundation seeks to create a global community, welcoming people from every career discipline and path who seek a deeper understanding of their career. We believe passionately in the power of stories, skilling and provocative discussions to change attitudes, lives and, ultimately influence informed life choices in the world.

CAREER ESSENTIAL TALKS. In this initiative, speakers appear physically or virtually (zoom) on a panel to give 2 hour talks and shorter presentations about their career journeys, professional insights and recommendations. Artists, journalists, media personalities, technologists, business leaders, designers and other experts take the stage to “Tell the Story” and to present valuable inspirational journeys and insights on their respective lines of careers. It has two projects i.e. the Career Essential Talks (physical) and Career Essential Series (Virtual)

SKILL MASTERY. This initiative WILL include skilling classes. It will give access to expert trainers and an organized course outline for skilling. It is being designed to build (education + entertainment) discussions and experience. This training will provide a nice middle ground between acquiring skills in a certain industry in a short time frame rather than doing a full course for 3-4 years to study the subject. The courses will be as follows: Digital Marketing, Public Speaking, Graphic Design and Photography.

TALKSHOWS AND AUDIO COLLECTIVE. This initiative will include career and business talk shows and podcasts inform of interviews in which some of the most interesting people will be interviewed and spoken to in a provocative and powerful discussions of careers, business and professional development 

Unemployment among the youth is a strain for economic development of Uganda. At least nine in every 10 Ugandans who have completed any form of education are unemployed. According to Uganda’s National Planning Authority (NPA) statistics released in 2017, 700,000 people join the job market every year regardless of qualification but only 90,000 get something to do. This translates to 87 percent of people ready to work but can’t find a job. Yet the same statistics emphasize how the youth constitute 78% of the country’s population (about 27 million people)

In Uganda today, just like any other African country, most young people are not just unemployed but also lack knowledge and/or information to make their own choices when it comes to informed career decisions

Bakash Media Foundation is creating a community, welcoming people from every career discipline and path who seeks a deeper understanding of their career. We believe passionately in the power of stories, insights and professional insights to change attitudes, lives and, ultimately influence informed career choices in the world. In our growth strategy, we hope to build and grow a platform of free knowledge from the best and most inspired career mentors — and a community of curious career pursuers to engage with ideas and each other, both online and physically.

The proposed solutions joint together will elevate young people by inspiring(talks) and equipping(skilling) them to realize the future they need.  

Having experienced unemployment and its consequences first hand, it's the basis to which I can justify the need for every young person in Uganda and beyond to be elevated for the competitive job market. Research and Surveys have been conducted on the young people in the Bakash Media community. It's furthermore the basis for which the proposed initiatives have been developed, tested and proven effective.

As of now, the Foundation has held 15+ events both physical and virtual; 5000 youth reached, 30+ mentors, 3 partnerships and less than 5 million Uganda Shillings raised. This justifies the organization having an established product, service, or business model rolled out in at least one community, which is poised for further growth.

Social Media, Web conferencing platforms and Audio platforms

As of now the Bakash Media community of over 5000 young people and 40+ mentors. In the next year, we hope to reach atleast 8000 young people in total with over 100+ mentors.

GOALS INCLUDE: Outreach of 8000 young people| 100+ mentors | 8 partnerships | 10+ programs

In our overall growth strategy, we intend to make three major developments:

1. Process Development. This includes re-designing the project/program structure through scaling and replication to focus on our strength and opportunities
2. Market Development. This includes expanding the market outreach using the initiative's digital assets like social media and WhatsApp community while paying attention to impact assessment and evaluation.
3. Team Development. This includes recruiting more team members and improving the capacity to deliver.

KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS will include;

1. Career Talks (Physical and Virtual)>> Registrants, Attendees, Poll results
2. Talk shows and Podcasts >> Viewership/Views
3. Skill Mastery >> Number of Trainees and Graduates
4. Social Media activity >> Likes, followers, & Subscribers

Our growth strategy is hindered by inadequate resources especially finance, technical support and human resource. This may limit our impact in the next year.

The strength of the team depends on its outstanding capacity to mobilize several young people to participate in its initiatives. Other supporting capacities include skilled team members especially in public speaking, content creation, strategy and advertising design. The other thing is its ability to adapt accordingly with the market environment especially during the COVID pandemic where they decided to adopt a remote work model to still serve their audience. 

• Upskill. This is a skilling initiative owned by the Innovation Village. We partnered with it to inspire and equip our audience in digital marketing fields. We also hope to work with them in the Skill Mastery course.
• Opportunity Tracker. This is a platform that connects opportunities like scholarship, fellowships and funding to people. The strategic partnership aims at bringing such opportunities of life transformation to young people especially those in the Bakash Media community.

N/A

Endorsements and such recognitions pave way for future collaborations and opportunities which can steer towards the development of our team. So, such an endorsement will be a start of something big