Safaricom has announced the second season of BLAZE Be Your Own Boss (BYOB) scheduled to kick off with the first regional summit scheduled for this weekend in Meru County.
Following a successful first season that saw 43% of Kenyan youth join the BLAZE platform and 44,000 young people under the age of 26 attend the countrywide summits, the second season aims to inspire Kenyan youth through inspiration and guidance by some of Kenya’s most successful young entrepreneurs.
The theme this year being Greatness Requires Internal Toughness (G.R.I.T)., the second season of BLAZE BYOB will focus on three key areas; to mentor and train youth by giving them the tools required to be successful at BYOB Creation Camps.
Secondly, to inspire youth to follow their passions and introduce them to relatable mentors who can talk about their personal journeys and how they found G.R.I.T to be successful at BLAZE BYOB Summits. BYOB will also introduce BLAZE CSR Fridays, a session aimed at teaching the youth to give back to the society.
“We are glad that the first edition of BLAZE BYOB was a success. We now want to build on the learnings we picked to improve the second edition. Key among the changes, we will be introducing three new areas that will help participants in building successful businesses and appreciating the need to give back to the society,” said Sylvia Mulinge, Director -Consumer Business, Safaricom.
The creation camps aims to have 350 participants with a pre-screening in Meru where youth will have the chance to give a 5 min elevator pitch about their business ideas to a panel of category experts with an aim to impart tangible skills onto the youth.
As the final part of the Creation Camp and ahead of the summit, all participants, mentors and performing artists, will go into five pre-identified high schools and have a 1-hour mentorship session, giving out a donation as part of the CSR projects.
BLAZE is a sub-brand of Safaricom and was created to give youth aged 26 years and below products, services and benefits tailored specifically to meet their everyday needs.
A first of its kind platform in Kenya, East and Central Africa, BLAZE was founded on what Kenyan youth say is most important to them: freedom, empowerment and success.