INVITATION TO APPLY: YOUTH LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME (YOULEAD)

Often, we hear that youth are lacking in leadership skills, ignoring that often they are denied the space to express or demonstrate their leadership skills. Youth need to capture the space and leverage whatever opportunities they see to occupy the leadership arena. There are many youth leadership development programmes, often by civil society organizations. These programmes however tend to be ad-hoc, episodic and lacking in sustainability. They are most driven by donor interests.
There is a need to have more structured and sustained development programme that will expose youth to various leadership development aspects as well as how to break the barriers and get into the leadership arena. This sustainability will be enhanced in the long-term mentoring with hands-on projects that participants are guided to bring to fruition.
At CITAD, we over the year been implementing a youth leadership programme through an in-group mentoring that we term Inspiring Leadership Reflection Series (ILERIS) whose objective is for young people to learn from the lived examples of the struggles and travails of successful figures in our society. The idea is to move away from conventional skills training to mind transformation experiences.
The Youth Leadership Development Programme (YOULEAD) is an extension of the ILERIS, albeit in a more intensive immersion way.

Purposes

Its goal is both mind transforming as well as exposure to critical thinking, and creative and innovative engagement of leveraging opportunities to enter the leadership space. It is ideal reorientation, attitudinal change process and hands-on training with the hope of not only the participants gaining insights into leadership skills but also transforming them into either business or social entrepreneurs.

Objectives

1. To develop and groom youth for social entrepreneurship
2. To facilitate youth job creation
3. To develop leadership skills of youth to leverage opportunities into breaking through the barriers of leadership
4. To support the incubation of business and social enterprise ideas and their transformation to the marketplace

Programme

This is a six-month, five-days-a-week programme. Attendance is compulsory for all who signed to participate. Successful candidates will undergo:
1. Ideation workshops at which they will conceive and articulate their tech ideas
2. The incubation period during which participants will be guided to produce specific unique products or solutions that will be driven to the market
3. The mentoring process to formalize their ideas into business, including valuation for and rating as preparation to be presented to an accelerator process
4. Participation in the monthly ILERIS sessions
5. Leadership skill coaching sessions
6. Social enterprise and business development classes

Expected Deliverable by Participations

All participations are expected to:

1. Attend at least six sessions of ILERIS
2. Write six monthly personal development experience
3. Write four monthly mentorship reports
4. Write one article development-focused article
5. Write and submit a business plan for either a business or a social enterprise
6. Development implementations plan for the business plan, including fund mobilization as well as exit plan
7. Must start and complete formal registration of his or her business
8. Must participate and share experience at a one-day annual experience-sharing session by the beneficiaries of the training

Requirements for Participation

1. Prospective participants must have at least OND in any field from a recognized institution
2. Must be computer literate
3. Must be within the age range of 24-32 years old
4. Must be able to communicate both orally and written in English
5. Must be recent graduates, typically not longer than 2 years since graduation

Benefits

1. CITAD will provide legal and limited financial support for participants to register their business enterprises
2. Provide a mentor who will guide the beneficiaries for a period of six months
3. Provide co-working space for a period of up to a maximum of six months following completion of the six-month programme
4. CITAD will provide joint exhibition/promotional activities for the harvested businesses
5. CITAD will provide first-year free hosting for harvested social enterprises or businesses or even an NGO
6. CITAD will organize a one-day annual experience sharing to be attended by the beneficiaries of the training

This form is currently closed for submissions.