Zion Innovation Lab-Gods' Silicon Valley.

We are seeking the elevate prize to help us leverage on a new innovation brainstorming concept called WORDTECH to eradicate Poverty in  Africa through innovation, by helping underprivileged African youths come up with ideas and start companies that are inspired by revelation of the word of God.

If selected for the elevate prize I would use the money to setup Zion Innovation Lab in the following ways:
Setup a virtual innovation space in form of a website and a mobile app.
Setup a physical office Space for the Innovation Lab in Kenya.
Develop a training curriculum that guides the African youths throughout their innovation journey from ideation to scaling.
Design Marketing Content and administer marketing strategies for the Lab.
Cover the training cost of the participants.
Support the participants ideas in terms of market research, prototyping and products development with the use of an in house team.
Support the youth launch activities and scaling of their innovations.
Cater for staff salaries, utilities and travel expenses.
Cover legal expenses, auditing and reporting.

My Story:
As a kid, born and raised in Kakamega, rural Kenya, innovation was a farfetched word that I could only associate it with robotic creatures in movies, high end vehicles in magazines, and cruising airplanes in the sky. It was until at 19, when I attended my first innovation workshop at university that my perception of innovation started hitting home. With each resource I could lay my hands on, I learnt the ins and outs of innovation and got obsessed with trying new ideas with the fundamental principle of innovation called Human Centered Design. But the more I tried implementing my ideas, the more they failed. As my relationship with God kept growing, I realized that everything around me came into existence as a result of innovation. This made me to start being intentional with the revelations I was receiving from God. Whether as a thought, a dream, a scripture, I started mapping the messages I was receiving from God to real life scenarios. With this technique, I came up with over 12 innovations spanning from agriculture, beauty-tech, Fintech, among others, pitched to over 10 competitions (locally and internationally) and raised over USD40,000 for two of my innovations while at university.

Vision and Purpose:
Having realized that I was called to innovate and raise others, God inspired me to come up with an innovation lab to help the youths of Africa come up with innovations that would in turn help them sustain their livelihoods through a unique innovation experience called WORDTECH. My vision is to raise a hundred WORDTECH inspired companies in one year time.

With almost 60% of Africas population being young people under 25, Africa has the largest population of young people in the world with many being unemployed. According to the World Bank, Youths account for 60% of all of Africas jobless population. This is due to poverty, failed education systems, financial illiteracy, and lack of purposeful living.
Many approaches to foster innovation such as incubation center and innovation hubs have also failed to create jobs and remained to be bid names void of impact to the African Youths. This is mainly because many fail to incorporate purposeful innovation that taps into the belief system of our communities. 
Zion Innovation Labs partners with churches to use a new innovation style called WORDTECH that will inspire the youth to come up with purpose driven innovative ideas from the word of God. The church will allow us to reach to young people with whom the Lab will provide tailor made support ranging from design thinking trainings, business development services, mentorship, seed funding, among others. The Lab will guide them throughout their innovation journey and help transform their God-given ideas into sustainable businesses that will create employment and eradicate poverty in Africa.

Zion is innovative because we are using a new innovation concept called WORDTECH that allows innovators to tap into their belief systems and receive idea revelations from God. 
WORDTECH is a new psychology-based method of innovation that we are introducing that would help innovators use direction from God (Divine guidance) to solving problems of the present day. Innovators get to be inspired by the word of God in their design thinking process and execution strategies by emulating successful approaches that were used in the bible during ancient days and mapping them to the modern world.
This is a method of creation that allows individuals align their innovations to their purpose and that capitalizes on the belief systems of people to build innovations that impact others. 

Also what makes our Lab unique is that we are partnering with Churches where we can tap into the largest network of the youth in Africa who serve under their fellowship.  
Additionally, the participants will have easy access to seed funds which is currently difficult for underprivileged young people to get. We would provide this access through a crowd funding platform that is currently under development and financed by the academys Leaders in Innovation Community Development Programs that I am part of.

With both a physical and virtual lab, Zion Innovation Lab targets to raise over 100 WORDTECH inspired innovations and sustainable business that are Youth led. This will be able to create over 1000 new direct job opportunities for the youth. 
Our goal as a Lab is to help alleviate poverty in Africa. Through the purpose-driven innovations that will come out of the Lab, we will be able to create profound impact in the communities where our innovators serve and transform the socio-economic landscape of the continent.

Moreover, through the WORDTECH Concept, we support young Africans who are passionate about building local solutions to their communities by developing their skills and providing them with end-to-end resources. 
WORDTECH innovation concept is already proud of two innovations that have raised USD 40,000 in their idea stages making it a promising way of innovating and eradicating poverty through innovation in Africa.