RADIX NEST

Provide training in 21st century soft skills for youth, improve upon processes of small businesses and introduce incorporation of technology in vocational/artisan sectors in rural communities. Skilled youth with technological advantage increases rural development and cuts down on unemployment. Several centers across the globe allows the impact to spread infinitely.

Our solution seeks to bridge the exposure gap between the knowledge and skills of the youth in rural areas. A huge gap exists in terms of employable skills, exposure to and adaptation of technology in small businesses, connection of artisans/vocational workers to markets outside their geographical area and availability of training structures to keep the youth busy and learning to improve their skills.

 We look to provide a state of the art training facility that provides access to the internet, has sections for vocational/artisan training and serves as a centre for all our training sessions. There would be short courses for small business owners in the locality to enable them step up their game and improve upon their business processes to maximize profits and enable expansion which will lead to employing more youth. The core of our training would revolve around digital and financial literacy, branding, effective communication and sales, critical thinking, creativity etc. The implementation of these modules will ensure that the youth in these rural or disadvantaged communities have access to exceptional training that will make them employable and ensure their aptness at staying on top of the game in the vastly growing workforce. It will also sharpen their business acumen and provide leeway for them to start up and scale businesses that impact the socio-economic development of the community.

The institution of structure in small businesses and entrepreneurial training coupled with business development will create a start-up ecosystem that will solve most of the problems in the community. The incorporation of technology into processes and enhancing skills and work of the youth will allow them make contributions to global problems and help alleviate most of similar issues that people like them face across the globe. 

The problem we seek to solve is poverty and unemployment in the rural areas. This is a coalition of different problems such as:

1. Lack of skills training for the youth to make them employable and enable them gain a constant source of income.

2. Lack of technological adaptions for small and medium size businesses to foster stupendous growth and expansion.

3. Lack of proper mentors and hubs that serve as incubation spaces to help young people in the rural areas advance their ideas or learn to implement working ideas from other places.

Our solution will work and is the best proposal for solving the problem because:

1. A skilled youth with ample soft skills would be self-confident and have a mind that thinks possibilities and thus translate into creation of enterprises or jobs that will aid in curbing poverty and slashing the levels of unemployment evident.
2. SME training will give the small and medium scale businesses an advantage of technology that will make their operations simpler and thus give owners time to visualize strategies to expand their businesses resulting in creation of more jobs for the youth.

Our solution would impact the lives of the youth in the rural areas by giving them direct jobs and providing them with tools and knowledge necessary to create their own opportunities. Thus, providing a source of income to benefit them, their community and the nation.

The people who will benefit from our solution includes poor and unemployed youth in the rural areas, small and medium scale businesses in rural areas and rural communities in Ghana and the world over.

The deployment will take the form of training, creation and workshop sessions within the various parts of the community.

Track the number of people who register for our programs and their progress, in terms of income level and being employed. - 1oo youth get trained and get jobs in the first year of roll-out

Track current number of customers and employees now, as against total number of customers and employees at the end of the period. - 20 small businesses expand to different communities within first year

Track the number of startups or new businesses born from the people who signed up for our program. - Help youth create their own opportunities

Our solution is unique because,

1. It provides supplemented soft skills training alongside the vocational training for youth in the rural areas.

2. It focuses on youth that have dropped out of school, as well as those still in school, it is inclusive and doesn't exclude anyone.

3. It provides access to the market outside the rural area for the rural artisans, and gives them a platform to offer their services to people across the country.

1. The freelance website that would be provided to sell the skill sets and artefacts of the rural youth will be localised to the people's level of understanding and familiarity of operations.

2. The agricultural technologies and practices that would be implemented, are compatible with the everyday processes that the youth know, except that the new technology would be more efficient and increase productivity.

3. The soft skills training and workshops that would be held are for 21st century skills and technological hacks for various industries that the youth would receive training in.

1. The youth whose skills, products or services would be featured on the freelance website, would be taken through the process of creating an account and managing relationships with clients over the platform. Their registration to the platform would cost them just a small fee and the commission that they'll pay for using the website would also be very affordable.

2. The agricultural technology that would be utilised would be in a lease form, that will allow the youth to pay per use over a period, but the tech would be made available to them when they need it.

We will sustain the project financially through:

1. Sales of good and services by youth in training online and locally.

2. Commission on any transaction that happens over freelance website.

3. Sales of on-the-job skills training programs for companies located in the rural areas and elsewhere

4. Provision of digital marketing, writing and research services to small and medium scale businesses in the rural area.

5. Rent of space for programs activities and work spaces for small businesses.

6. Provision of charged graduate training programs for young graduates in rural communities to make them employable

The limiting factors include lack of a physical training center to hold all training and workshop sessions.

A limiting factor would also be convincing already successful small businesses to see the need for expansion and structure that will make their operations high class ones.

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I hope to get some collaborations on how to introduce and use technology efficiently to solve rural problems and concerns.

I also hope to get some support in terms of expertise on reaching out to dropouts with content that will be relevant to their personal and professional development and also using financial and digital literacy to transform the lives of students and young people living in areas without a lot of created opportunity.

Ghana Think Foundation and Digital Opportunity Trust

Youth Employment Agency

Compassion International