IGNITE Youth Organisation

IGNITE Youth is changing the narrative of children and youth aged between 13-29 who come from low-income communities by providing disruptive, unconventional and equity-based career guidance services that challenge the status quo and unleash the innovative and creative power of African youth. We challenge the youth to think beyond an 8 to 5 job to becoming today and tomorrow’s purpose-driven generation of African Leaders, history-makers and disruptors. Through this unconventional way of providing career guidance, IGNITE Youth Organisation aims to show the world what all young people can do, once they discover their why, in other words, purpose. Not only are they able to create meaningful careers for themselves but they are also able to contribute to their nation’s development, which ultimately strengthens the communities they live in. 

Tadzie Madzima is the Founder and Director of IGNITE Youth Organisation. Tadzie is tasked with creating business plans, overseeing day-to-day activities, improving performance, developing organizational culture, supervising heads of departments, reporting on revenue, and directing organizational strategy.

As the Founder and Director, Tadzie leads by example while simultaneously striving toward sustainability. She develops and implements strategies aiming to promote the organization’s mission and “voice”, creates complete business plans for the attainment of goals and objectives set by the board of directors, builds an effective team of leaders by providing guidance and coaching to subordinate managers.

IGNITE Youth provides during and after-school holistic youth programs as an important part of education as they support academic development.

After-school programs are an important part of education as they support social, emotional, cognitive, and academic development, reduce risky behaviours, promote physical health, and provide a safe and supportive environment for youth. Unfortunately, most public schools or schools in underserved and low-income communities in Zimbabwe rarely provide vocational/career guidance, mental health services, or after-school or university programs. 

We undertook a human-centered design exercise to learn more about the availability of career advice services in low-income regions before we began providing these services to youth in and out of school. After surveying 423 young people in Zimbabwe between the ages of 13 and 25, we found that over 80% had never received any kind of career counselling, either at school or anywhere else. 15% of the other 20% who reported receiving career assistance stated they did not find it useful in identifying a fulfilling and suitable career path based on their abilities, strengths, and interests.

IGNITE Youth is filling this gap by combining during and after-school or university holistic youth development programs with a unique, one-of-a-kind and intensive Purpose-Centered Career Guidance Curriculum. While we work with young people of all walks of life, we are especially invested in assisting youth from low-income communities and disadvantaged backgrounds who often lack access to services like career guidance, mentorship, and mental health support as they usually are not offered in their schools, colleges and universities. 

The programs offer a 360° holistic approach to youth development with a focus on their physical, intellectual, economic, social, and emotional needs such as their mental health. 

Formative research (e.g. usability studies; feasibility studies; case studies; user interviews; implementation studies; pre-post or multi-measure research; correlational studies) We have a 98% completion rate for our programs with 85% saying that they felt that our programs had helped them improve their academic performance and 98% saying the mental health services we provide improved their outlook in their hope for a future and outlook in life.

It revealed that the solution we are providing is helping the youth have a vision for their lives and is improving their academic performance as well as mental wellbeing.

We plan to expand to more cities and towns so this is the right time to introduce this so we are able to scale effectively and efficiently through the power of technology. We also want to introduce this to the Ministry of Education so that it becomes part of the curriculum so we need to improve our solution before we do so.

How can technology help us improve the delivery of our programs and curriculum?

How can technology increase access to our programs and curriculum?

How can we measure our effectiveness and improve what we are doing in our programs?

We've conducted mostly formative research but we know we can benefit from summative and foundational research as well and that will help us improve our programs and also increase our chances of attaining funding.

Yes, we plan to use this as we expand into other cities and in our engagement with the Ministry of Education. We also will use this for grant applications and funding opportunities.

1. Improving the overall solution 

2. Improving our delivery of our programs through technology

3. Improving the way we research and collect information about the impact of our work

4. Improving our overall strategy