This month, the Youth for Technology Foundation (YTF) received a generous donation from the Northern Illinois University’s Center for Social Entrepreneurship to launch an online youth entrepreneurship and mentorship platform, made possible by Dennis and Stacey Barsema.
The Competition
The funds will support Project 3E (Education, Environment, and Entrepreneurship), and will cover program operation needs, training costs, and provide small start-up grants to youth social entrepreneurs in Nigeria.
Participants in Project 3E will be selected via writing competition. Youth, ages 18 to 24, will submit their assessment of an ongoing environmental issue in their community and their idea of how education and entrepreneurship can solve the problem.YTF will select the top 100 ideas to support from the top submissions.
The Program
Project 3E will empower aspiring youth entrepreneurs by providing them with the entrepreneurship and ICT skills needed to launch sustainable social enterprises. This includes linking basic education and job skills training opportunities with labor market needs of youth in Nigeria and providing entrepreneurship training for period of 12 months to the selected youth.
Training topics will include business plan development, creating and financing startups, diversification and expansion, mobile technology for business, human resources, and marketing and sales. YTF will provide entrepreneurial skills through both classroom and online instruction.
Youth participants in Project 3E will have access to an online platform designed by YTF to encourage collaborative learning among the participants and to provide access to mentors and relevant academic and entrepreneurial resources.
The Motivation
Working within the belief that the solution to poverty is an evolving and expanding economy, YTF’s Project 3E will afford an opportunity for youth social entrepreneurs to take their work to national and even global stage by engaging the ambitions, creativity, and entrepreneurial potential to build sustainable communities.
“Africa is generating jobs, but not enough particularly for youth. Only 22 percent of the 73 million new jobs created between 2000 and 2008 went to people 24 and under,” said Njideka Harry, YTF Founder and Chief Executive. “We are grateful to NIU for their recognition of our work at YTF and especially to the student team, led by Zach Fiegel, for selecting YTF as the beneficiary of this award.”
The Impact
Youth will have the opportunity to present their environmentally-focused business plans through the Project 3E website after 12 months, when YTF will select 4 winning social entrepreneurs to support based on their grasp of business and environmental issues, viability of their business plans and emphasis on financial inclusion, and long-term sustainability funding to establish their businesses. The winners will receive seed funding and ongoing mentorship on how to access commercial capital and crowd-source investment capital for social entrepreneurs.
An estimated 10,000 youth will be indirectly positively impacted by this work through shared learning and job creation.
About the Northern Illinois University Center for Social Entrepreneurship
The NIU Center for Social Entrepreneurship provides the opportunity for NIU students to earn either a minor or certificate in social entrepreneurship. The courses in the program focus on educating students about the world’s most pressing social problems and seeks to help students develop the skills to engage the market and apply their business skills to develop creative
revenue-generating solutions in their pursuit of significantly changing the systems that perpetuate these problems.
