Opportunity Forum

The International Labor Organization expects the global unemployment rate of about five percent to remain unchanged over the next few years. However, the Boston consulting group expects that by 2030, the world would be experiencing a shortage of labor. This reveals the need for the establishment of a common platform where employers can reach out to prospective employees to facilitate the reduction in unemployment globally. We interact with recruiters and stakeholders from various organizations and institutions on open opportunities and how prospective applicants can get accepted into schools, conferences, scholarships, competitions, grants, entrepreneurial development, fellowships, jobs, and internships both globally. Using mediums like YouTube, social media, and word of mouth we will help a lot of people grab opportunities. This directly mitigates the challenge of unemployment and the lack of avenues for personal development. Hence, promoting the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) eight, four, and most important goal one.

If Unemployment and personal development have been a major problem in Africa. Great potentials are buried with no trace because they did not get access to the right opportunity that will materialize them. Africa’s unemployment rate is estimated above 7.8% as of 2017, more than 172 million people globally were unemployed in 2018 according to the International Labor Organization. Apart from the problem of not getting access to these opportunities, most people do not know how to advantageously position themselves for the few opportunities available for them. A survey in some local universities in Ghana revealed that most students do not know Curriculum Vitae except after school when they are searching for jobs. Opportunity Forum assists groups of people to adequately market themselves professionally through their Curriculum Vitae, Resumes, and other documents such as Cover letter and letter of motivation.

“Opportunity Forum” connects young people around the world to opportunities by providing information and the tools to help them position themselves strategically to access the opportunities they desire. As individuals with a passion for giving back to society, we envision a world where people could gain easy access to opportunities; hence, the idea of “Opportunity Forum” was conceived. We have realized that the youth face lots of rejections in applications and are culprits of poor applications. In some cases, several skilled and qualified applicants also get rejected mainly as a result of poorly prepared applications and the inability to present themselves adequately to the selection team. Opportunity Forum, hence, reaches out to talent recruitment agencies, employers, and institutions to seek their inputs and advise on how one could submit applications that are worth being selected. These recommendations from institutions, and employers, coupled with some valuable assistance from the Career Service Department of Ashesi University, are shared with our audience to significantly enhance the quality of their application for local and international opportunities. Most use YouTube channels and social media to reach out to our target market.

l and social media to reach out to our target market.

Mostly, young Africans find it difficult in fitting into the corporate world to develop themselves and fully impact the continent. We help young people enhance their chances of being selected by providing them information on available opportunities across the globe and comprehensively guiding them through the intricacies of the application process. We work closely with several employers and organizations to broadcast the opportunities they have available and how interested applicants can apply and get selected. Furthermore, we provide an opportunity for academic institutions to reach out to prospective students and guide them through the application process. These are often done in interactive live sessions to capacitate our audience to pose more personal and specific questions to recruiters and institutions. We do this by interacting with individuals who have had the privilege of being hired or accepted into certain jobs, internships, and other opportunities. They share their experience, recommendations, and advice on how people can increase their chances of securing their dream opportunities. While we create content that can be beneficial to our viewers, we also set aside time to interact with people who are passionate about finding the right opportunity. We devote time to help them succeed in their applications.

Unemployment and personal development is a major problem in Africa. It has hindered a lot of people from pursuing their dreams and contributing to the development of the continent. This has further resulted in poverty and other social cancers. Opportunity forum is dedicated to solving this problem from the grassroots by providing avenues for the youth where they can access opportunities for personal development and employment. We realized that most youths have a social media presence. That is the reason why YouTube and social media are some of our channels to reach our market target.

Opportunity forum seeks to bring all opportunities to the youth and also help them to strategically position themselves to secure these opportunities. We provide a video explaining step by step approach in securing these opportunities. Through our online platform, we link recruiters and stakeholders of organizations to respective persons who might be interested in the potential gains from the organization. This new approach in helping people find opportunities and personal development is a sure way of helping the youth in mitigating unemployment and poverty in Africa and the world at large. 

Our solution is innovative because of the technology we will be putting in place to help the physical challenged persons. Our App will also help map people to potential employers based on their profile.

The technologies used for our solution are existing technologies which include digital devices( cameras and microphones), YouTube, Twitter, and Zoom. The cameras and microphones used to shoot and record our programs to be published on our YouTube channel. The YouTube channel is the platform where our content passes to get to our audience around the world. We also get interactive on our Twitter page with Organizations and individuals who would want to work with us. We also get to interact with people through Phone calls and our email. These technologies have been the backbone of our solution.

These technologies are used in various fields around the world. The digital devices are widely used in the media for video shooting and recording around the world. YouTube and twitter have a growing database around the world for video uploading and Interaction. It is widely used by organizations and individuals to upload videos and advertise their products and services. Zoom is widely used for video conferencing and it has become more predominant amidst this pandemic. All these technologies and already across the world.

Lack of opportunity avenues in Africa has led to an increasing rate of unemployment and poverty in Africa. Our journey map to achieving our goal of providing the youth with entrepreneurship, employment, and personal development opportunities to eradicate poverty in Africa and the world at large. This solution is also targeted to most marginalized and less privileged people in Africa and around the world. This solution will also reduce social vices in Africa. This is because the root cause of these social vices is as a result of unemployment. The idea of this solution came up as the results of personal and other experiences that each of the team members has gone through in their quest for opportunities for their personal and entrepreneurial careers. Hence we empathize with the market target on the problem and understand the link between the market and the solution. The solution will also their confidence and courage to go for opportunities that will further equip them to be self-sufficient economically. Theory of change

The solution currently serves about 3,160 people across our various platforms. For the last four months since introducing our solution, we have about 2,600 YouTube viewers. Our Twitter page which was created two weeks ago has 60 followers. We have also received about 500 emails and phone calls from people and organizations who needed our services. In the next year, we hope to be serving 10,000 people across the world through our various platforms. Our YouTube will serve 7,000 people and Twitter will serve 1000 people. We will also be serving 2,000 people through phone calls and emails. In the next five, we will be serving 50,000 people across the world through our various platforms and our new application yet to come.

In the next year, we hope to be a self-funded and revenue-generating marketing and opportunity platform serving 10,000 people across Africa and the world. We would connect with more organizations and institutions to give opportunities to more people especially the less privileged and marginalized across the world. Within the next five years, we will be developing a new Application that will map people to Opportunities based on their profiles and information given. People will also be able to take entrepreneurship programs on the Application for personal development. We will set up career services that will be coaching people on career path guidance. We will be organizing a global career day where people get to interact with entrepreneurs, companies, and institutions of their dreams. With these drastic measures will become one of the globally recognized marketing companies providing people with opportunities for personal development. 

Our vision to provide quality and accessible opportunities to people across the world has been hindered by a lot of factors that might limit our impact in the next year and five-year plan. The most pressing factor is financial constraints. Even though we have helped thousands of people in getting opportunities, the team still does not own digital devices such as cameras and microphones. This has affected us and we have to cancel most of our programs with companies due to the inability to access this equipment. We also do not have a full-time technical team because we do not have the funds to get full-time video editors to produce most of our programs. This has led to most of our videos unpublished to help people. Another limiting factor is the market barrier. Due to the language barrier, we are not able to expand our market to other international language speaking countries. This has limited our scaling measures internationally. Another barrier that limits our impact is technical barriers. We do not have the technical equipment to reach out to physically challenged persons such as the virtually impaired and the deaf. This has excluded them in our programs and has limited our vision of reaching out to all people. 

To overcome these challenges we have outlined measures to materialize our vision. With the financial barrier, we hope to gain a one time fund such as the Solve which is a typical source of funding for start ups. With these funding we will purchase our digital equipment and get full-time video editors to facilitate our progress. This will help us publish more insightful programs to help people in their quest for employment and personal development. With the availability of funds we will be able to complete our upcoming Application which is expected to provide entrepreneurship, employment and educational opportunities for personal development. To bridge the language barrier we will translate our programs in other international languages using either interpreters or language translating Applications to help reach our audience irrespective of their language. We will design special programs for the  physically challenged people by partnering with the Association physically challenged persons to help the physically challenged persons to benefit from our programs. 

Currently the full-time workers for the team are 3 people. Which consist of the president, Programs Manager and Public relation director. We have 3 part-time workers in charge of video shooting and editing. We also have 2 workers on contract based in charge of Application development.

The founders of this organization established this solution based on their individual experiences in their opportunities and success stories. I am currently on a MasterCard scholarship at the university. I am an alumni of Millennium Fellowship and was part of the admission committee for Africa in 2019. I am also a member of the Clinton Global Initiative. I contested for the Fishbowl Challenge and qualified for semi finals. I have also attended leadership and entrepreneur summits in Rwanda and Peru. I had admission with a scholarship to Watson Incubator accelerated program and was selected for the Harvard Cross Road leadership experience. These are just but few opportunities I have secured during my three years in the university. Through these opportunities I have networked with global leaders and people I could have never dream of meeting.  All the team founding team members have similar stories with opportunities. Before all these opportunities, was the struggle to figure out how to make it out of poverty. We have witnessed great potentials being wasted as a result of  lack of opportunity to move to the next level. With all these experiences if any organizations could solve the problem of poverty and unemployment through accessing opportunities, it would be our team. 

Opportunity Forum has currently two partners for opportunities for career building and piloting 

Ashesi University Career services department carer building and accessing opportunities

Axis human capital for capacity building and entrepreneurship development.

Opportunity Forum” is a platform currently based on YouTube created by young achievers in Ashesi University as part of an initiative to help the youth know various opportunities around them. We specialize in producing a wide variety of content to enable individuals to discover local and global opportunities. Through our online platform, we link recruiters and stakeholders of organizations to respective persons who might be interested in the potential gains from the organization. YouTube, a growing database where one can find a lot of videos on entrepreneurship and career development, is a helpful tool we have adopted to reach our audience across the world starting from Ghana. This is aimed at reducing unemployment and poverty in the country and the world at large. Link to out business model. Business Model

Opportunity forum provides marketing services to companies and organizations they work with. We serve as ambassadors of these companies to the youth and this come with incentives to help support our work. We also shoot commercial videos for companies and organization with a charge. Also, individuals who will need our services to help in their applications process pay us. We will be organizing capacity building and career guidance seminar with companies and individual which will have registration fees for both companies and individuals. Our YouTube channel too will be monetized to support our revenue stream. These are the various revenue streams of our solution.

The potentials of this solution is being hindered by various barriers as mentioned earlier such as financial barrier, market barrier and technical barrier. All these barriers limits our impact and Solve is the best platform to help us overcome this barriers. The most pressing one is the financial barrier. The absence of inadequate funding has resulted to all other barriers such as market barrier and technical barrier. Getting funding will us provide our own cameras and microphones to coverage our programs for people to benefit. We will employ full-time workers who will help with our technical team in bringing up our new application. we will be able to acquire translating application to translate our programs to other international languages. This will increase our market across Africa and the world at large. Also, with the availability of funds we will design special programs for physically challenged person so that they will benefit from our programs.  

Technology is the driving force of our solution. With the right technologies in place we will be able to develop Application that will he people in their such for opportunities. Our service will need a wide distribution to make more people benefit from it. Also, companies will here about us to organize programs that will aid the youth in their such for opportunities. Funding and revenue model will help us control our cash flow and strategies to increase our revenue. Legal and regulatory partnership will help us to legally establish the organization with the right organizational structures put in place. Another vital part of the solution is marketing and media exposure. As a marketing organization we will need to partner with experienced marketing teams to help us in growing our market target. With our YouTube and Twitter page we will need media exposure to help us reach more people.

We would like to partner with MIT faculty for the development of technologies that will facilitate our impact. 

Opportunity Forum has made a name for itself in providing employment, entrepreneurship and educational opportunities for personal development. We interact with recruiters and stakeholders from various organizations and institutions on open opportunities and how prospective applicants can get accepted into their dream school, conferences, scholarships, competitions, grants, fellowships, jobs, and internships both locally and globally. We provide guidance to people in their quest to finding and getting accepted into opportunities (i.e., jobs, internships, admissions, scholarships, etc.). Opportunity Forum provides easy and comprehensive tips and recommendations on opportunities around the world and what it takes to secure them. The GM prize will boost our international recognition and innovative ways in connecting people to job opportunities globally. Opportunity Forum believes that every single individual, regardless of race, color, gender, age, or nationality, deserves to gain access to local and global opportunities.