BLAZE by Safaricom has today hosted its second Be Your Own Boss (BYOB) Summit of 2019 at Kisii National Polytechnic, Kisii County.
The first summit was held at Sigalagala National Polytechnic and was attended by more than 3,500 young people in Kakamega County. The Kisii edition saw an estimated 3,000 young people get a chance to learn from BLAZE on building careers and enterprises and packaging their brand through G.R.I.T (Greatness Requires Internal Toughness).
This year, BYOB has expanded its youth engagement programme to 18 summits, compared to last year’s three, which engaged more than 26,000 youth.
Be Your Own Boss (BYOB) features youth mentorship summits and creation camps all focused on empowering Kenyan youth to achieve success. They provide valuable information, skills and networking opportunities in a variety of fields. The field include creative arts, fashion, film and photography, music, agriculture, sales and production and sports. BYOB also include a TV show that pits young entrepreneurs from all over Kenya against each other in a battle to win a grand prize package of Ksh. 5 million. The 5 million constitutes 3 million in start-up capital and the remainder in the form of mentorship, financial advice and business support from Safaricom and various partners. Season 2 of the BLAZE BYOB (Be Your Own Boss) TV show saw Brian Rono emerge as the winner.
Like in the previous editions, attendees interacted with local mentors who are industry experts through interest-specific pods where they went through workshops and learnt from the mentor’s experience.
The Kisii Edition featured mentors such as Fundi Frank (fashion designer), Catherine Kamau (Actress), Eric Musyoka (Music Producer), Jibril Blessing (Video Director), Caleb Karuga (farmer and agribusiness consultant), Nancie Mwai (blogger and vlogger) among others.
In addition to the mentors, BLAZE has partnered with Huawei, Google, IBM, USAID-K-YES, Wezesha and other partners, to provide a mix of content, training and employment opportunities to BLAZE subscribers who attend the summits.
This year, BYOB has introduced an E-sports tournament for youth who are looking at E-Sports as a career choice. This will be in partnership with Pro Series Gaming (PSG) and HEVA Fund. BLAZE will run grassroots competitions at the summits, which will culminate in a national finals where top gamers will compete for a Ksh. 300,000 grand prize. They will also receive an all-expenses paid trip to experience the ESL in Europe next year. Winners at the regional finals receive a cash prive of Ksh. 80,000.
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.