BLAZE by Safaricom on Saturday hosted the third summit of the 2019 edition of the BLAZE BYOB (Be Your Own Boss) at Kenya Medical Training College Grounds in Kisumu County.
The first two summits were held in Kakamega and Kisii Counties respectively. Each of the first two summits drew over 3,500 youth who got a chance to learn from BLAZE mentors on building careers and enterprises and packaging their brand through G.R.I.T (Greatness Requires Internal Toughness).
This season, BYOB has expanded its youth engagement programme to 18 summits, compared to last year’s three, which engaged more than 26,000 youth.
To complement the summits, BLAZE has also developed a new platform dubbed BLAZE LINK, a free e-leaning platform. The platform seeks to enable young people to upgrade their skills through online courses and empower them to pursue success in their professions of interest.
Be Your Own Boss (BYOB) features youth mentorship summits and creation camps all focused on empowering Kenyan youth. The young people are provided with valuable information, skills and networking opportunities in a variety of fields including: creative arts, fashion, film and photography, music, agriculture, sales and production and sports.
Like in previous editions, attendees interacted with local mentors who are industry experts through interest-specific pods where they go through workshops and learn from the mentor’s experiences. The Kisumu Edition featured mentors such as Fundi Frank (fashion designer), Catherine Kamau (Actress), Nina Kimemia (EQ Coach), Naiboi (Musician), Brian Diang’a (pro gamer) among others.
In addition to the mentors, BLAZE has partnered with Huawei, Google, IBM, USAID-K-YES, Wezesha among others, to provide a mix of content, training and employment opportunities to BLAZE subscribers who attend the summits.