Kisumu County Hosts BLAZE Be Your Own Boss Summit

BLAZE by Safaricom (NSE: SCOM) hosted the third summit of the fourth season of BLAZE 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).

“Since the inception of BLAZE in 2016, we have worked hard at transforming the lives of our young people, this year, our target is to empower 1.3 million youth by providing access to a platform that allows them to connect, learn and showcase their talents,” said Michael Joseph, Safaricom CEO.

This season, BYOB has expanded its youth engagement program 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, an aggregator of e-learning resources built to enable young people to upgrade their skills through online courses and empower them to pursue success in their professions of interest.

“BLAZE LINK is our new addition to the Be Your Own Boss (BYOB) platform, which focuses on empowering the youth as they journey towards success. We are leveraging on the power of digital platforms so that we can reach those who cannot make it to the BYOB summits and creation camps,” said Mr. Joseph.

Be Your Own Boss (BYOB) features youth mentorship summits and creation camps all focused on empowering Kenyan youth to achieve success by providing 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, and other partners, to provide a mix of content, training and employment opportunities to BLAZE subscribers who attend the summits.