era92 Creative

We exist to end youth unemployment in our lifetime.

We’re a social enterprise operating in one of the smallest economies in the world where only 30% of the population has access to the internet but because people backed us, we’ve seen more than 700 young people go through the Elevate Academy 

The digital economy long took over yet young people at the bottom of the pyramid, living in slums and formerly war-torn areas, cannot even access a computer. The Elevate Booth solution is breaking inaccessibility and exclusion barriers to entry into the digital workforce for youth in underserved communities that are miles away from the city center resources.  

The Booth is equipped with computers & the internet to form a virtual studio that connects students to tutors even in the absence of tutors physically. 

Africa is the youngest and fastest-growing continent in the world, but again it’s the poorest. By 2030, there will be 375 million young people in the job market in Africa. We’ve noticed a significant gap between the number of young people seeking work and the limited employment opportunities available to them.

At era92, we are solving the problem of youth unemployment through training young people from the slums with digital skills and preparing them for entrepreneurial opportunities. We train youth in Graphics Design, Film, Web Design & Software Development supplemented with entrepreneurial boot camps.

Youth aged 15-35 years make up 88% of the resident population in underserved communities. Young people in these communities attribute their source of poverty to unemployment, low-wage jobs, drug abuse, tribalism, and unfavorable government policies. Africa's nearly 420 million youth aged 15-35, one-third is unemployed and discouraged, another third is vulnerably employed, and only 1 in 6 is in wage employment.  

We are challenging marginalization, low-wage jobs, and irrelevant education curriculums. Through a network of employment partners, we connect companies around the world to our top talent who then get into meaningful employment.

The Elevate Booth uses a hybrid model of learning that is both physical and online but runs under the same structure, with the same programs (Web & Software Development, Graphics Design, Film-making & Photography) and number of cohorts (2 cohorts) under the Elevate Academy

The Physical Booth is equipped with computers updated with necessary software tools, furniture & the internet and also forms a virtual studio that connects students to tutors in the absence of the tutors physically. 

Online, the booth runs on a digital platform that trains youth with digital skills & connects them to jobs worldwide. It allows students to submit assignments, post questions, and receive answers from their tutors and fellow students. Furthermore, tutors can post intriguing questions and lesson materials for review. Through tools like Spark Video, students and teachers can make presentations using short, animated, narrated explainer videos. 

The platform also doubles as a marketplace that bridges potential employers to talents in Africa to be outsourced for creative work. 

By partnering with schools and churches in the local underserved communities we target, the booths will be set up in these spaces for security purposes, easy monitoring, and activations for new cohorts.

Our beneficiaries are at-risk young adults of ages 15 and above living in and around the urban slums & war-torn areas of Uganda. They live in congested and poorly constructed houses with leaking roofs and demolished floors. They lack access to electricity, basic health care services, and sanitation sewers plus quality schools. We are currently serving in the slum communities of Kosovo and Katanga in the outskirts of Kampala city. Every cohort which runs for 6 months, we train 100 youth. 95% of that number is recruited from the slums that we work in. 

Our beneficiaries are challenged with access to quality upskilling centers that are within their community and don’t cost a dollar because they are already unemployed and come from humble backgrounds. Through the Elevate Booth, a prototype of the Elevate Academy, youth can receive quality training for on-demand digital skills in the market for free and from the comfort of their communities without having to incur extra costs to move to the city centre to acquire a skill that's moreover a digital one and compete ably for jobs in the tech & creative industry. 

Brilliance is equally distributed but opportunity is not. The digital economy long took over yet young people at the bottom of the pyramid, living in slums and formerly war-torn areas, cannot even access a computer. The Elevate Booth solution is breaking inaccessibility and exclusion barriers to entry into the digital workforce for youth in underserved communities that are miles away from the city center resources.  

By democratizing our digital skills training & upskilling program through shipping container classrooms in different underserved communities and a digital platform, we are increasing opportunities for youth to acquire jobs remotely.

era92 Creative is a design agency that runs on a service delivery business model and a percentage of the profits covers our Elevate Program of skilling youth. We create revenues through monthly retainers, one-off projects, and dedicated remote teams. 

We plan to increase market penetration in the U.S market by establishing remote offices offering unlimited graphic design for a flat monthly fee to customers.

We have an established product, service, and business model which is poised for further growth. 

https://era92.com/offers digital design solutions to organizations in the U.S.A, U.K and Uganda. Profits from this work are re-invested in the Elevate Academy which is running in two slum communities currently. 

The academy has produced 700+ skilled professionals over the 7 years we have operated yet the opportunity gap only keeps widening. Our prototype is proven and ready to scale to more underserved communities to train more youth knee-deep in unemployment.  

Likewise, our business model is also ready to scale globally to increase revenues and profits to scale the academy. We set out with a 2025 vision to scale to 4 continents in 7 countries through a 3 pronged digital platform that serves as a marketplace, skills youth online, and serves as a client portal and organizational dashboard. 

We are in the digital era yet youth from underserved communities cannot even access a computer. While the more privileged young people can access remote work because of their digital skills and stay afloat during crises like Covid'19, youth from slums and alike communities continue further down the poverty drain. 

These Elevate Booths will enable broader positive social impact in many other underserved communities and to youth limited by funds from across the country who can still access our courses online.

The booths are a significantly improved approach to cost-effective scaling as opposed to the traditional construction of buildings and their mobility allows us to move them to any part of the community as the community develops. Our tech-enabled solution is providing more equitable access to the digital workforce for young people lacking connectivity through a 6-months intensive apprenticeship learning Web & Software Development, Films, and Graphic Design which skills they can leverage to develop high quality digital products for companies around the world. 

Our solution relies on digital technologies to train students in web-based technologies and applications such as Adobe Suite. 

Content Management Systems such as WordPress, software platforms like WebFlow allow students to design, build and launch websites while Adobe Suite allows filmmakers, photographers and graphics designers to create and enhance images and videos. 

There are no risks associated with it.

Currently, we are serving 200 youth a year at the main Elevate center in Kampala. 

By 2022, with a hub established in Northern Uganda, we will be serving a total of 500 youths a year. 

In five years, with booths established in 5 communities in Uganda and Kenya and our online platform, we will be able to reach 5000 youths a year. 

Social Impact Goal 1: We aim to extend and increase our impact to communities in Gulu, Uganda, and Kibera, Kenya. By establishing digital classrooms in shipping containers, we will be training 500 youth a year in these communities. 

Social Impact Goal 2: We aim to increase youth employment by reducing global barriers to outsourcing to African creatives and developers. We will achieve this by launching an online marketplace with a strong brand of quality and value for money.

Social Impact Goal 3: Our goal is to reach 1 million youths in Africa in the next 10 years. This will be made possible through our online marketplace and have expanded our base to more underserve communities.

We have an existing network of partners in England, Scotland, Ireland, USA, Canada and Netherlands who are committed to working alongside us to support us in achieving our ambitious goals. We are organising online events (webinars, discussions etc) to help us scale up our stakeholder network. Through our global network that we can connect at a personal level to people out there who share our vision and need our services, and get them on board to support our cause and buy our services thereby supporting our social impact goals.

We measure our social impact through the number of youth trained, graduated, those who go on to become freelancers & small business owners.  To date, since 2015, we've impacted over 700+ youth with digital & entrepreneurship skills & employment. with 30% of them in freelance careers and 25% running small businesses. We've retained 30% while the 15% are attached to companies. 

26 with 6 of them as part-time staff

Trinity, the founder, spearheads the team leading this effort. He grew up on the streets, stealing and robbing in a gang he used to be a part of. When the leader of the gang was killed, he got a wake-up call. It’s not until someone gifted him a computer that he used to teach himself Graphics Design that he broke out of poverty and started era92 elevate to give that same opportunity to young people in the slums like himself. Together with the staff at the Elevate Academy, they work together to identify more underserved communities to scale in and develop innovative and sustainable solutions to end youth unemployment in Africa.

Our leadership team embodies the values of diversity, equity, and inclusion. It is a team of vibrant young people from the slums and underprivileged backgrounds. Our equity policy seeks to ensure fair treatment, equality of opportunity, and fairness in access to information and resources for all. We believe this is only possible in an environment built on respect and dignity. Inclusion has helped build a culture of belonging by actively inviting the contribution and participation of all people.

For 7 years now, we have worked hard to ensure young people from cut-off communities participate in the digital economy. Uganda has the youngest population in the world today yet suffers such high poverty and youth unemployment levels. The Digital WorkForce Challenge would help expose us to a larger network of supporters, donors and impact investors to enable us improve and scale our program so that more youth can access digital skills and live a better life. 

We seek a skills/knowledge partnership to expand our talent base, a venture partnership to scale our revenues on a global scale and creating a route to market strategy into foreign markets 

Tech corporations would make great venture and skills partners as they can outsource our talents and at the same time upskill them to expand their corporate social responsibility portfolio