For and by youth: GenU YPAT members lead capacity-building workshop at Commonwealth Youth Forum 2022
GenU was well-represented at this year’s Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting and Commonwealth Youth Forum held in Kigali, Rwanda.
On 20 June 2022, the Chief Executive Officer of GenU, Kevin Frey, spoke as a panellist in a plenary session about skills for the future of work. Speaking alongside partners from the Commonwealth of Learning, Prince’s Trust International, YouthConnekt Africa and the Be A Giver (BAG) Foundation, he highlighted the need for education systems to incorporate entrepreneurship into their modus operandi.
The following day, at the Commonwealth Youth Forum, members of the GenU Young People’s Action Team (YPAT) had the opportunity to lead an interactive capacity-building workshop on securing investment for a project or business. Ineza Grace and Jean Claude Niyomugabo, two young entrepreneurs from Kigali, explained how young people can leverage communications and storytelling to ‘crowd in’ funding for their ideas. The pair also conducted an interactive ‘elevator pitch’ session, inviting young people to practise pitching an idea. Below, Jean Claude reflects on the experience of taking part in the Commonwealth Youth Forum.
Youth leadership in action at the Commonwealth Youth Forum
On 21 June 2022, I had an opportunity to lead a capacity-building session at the Commonwealth Youth Forum on attracting investment for business ideas or start-ups.
With other GenU Young People’s Action Team members from Rwanda, I helped present the opportunity for other youth attendees to top up their skills and knowledge, which will be relevant and beneficial on their changemaking journey, to better implement the ideas they have formulated in that forum over three days.
In this capacity-building session, I gave a presentation about the creation of elevator pitches, such as their components, kind of message, speaker, audience and context, as well as how they can attract the attention of investors when pitching to them.
After the capacity-building session, I attended a closing ceremony with over 300 youth delegates from across the 54 Commonwealth nations, where the key takeaway from the conference was the theme: ‘Taking Charge of our Future.’ We were reminded by high-level leaders that we are future leaders. I believe, however, that if young people are the future leaders, the urgency of the need to make our world better requires us to see now as the future.
Therefore, we should take charge of our future. I learned that we could take charge of our future by contributing to the development of our local communities, countries, and the world at large by using the opportunities that surround us. Finally, I created a network with other young people from diverse backgrounds, where we can share our perspectives about how we can lift fellow young people to create a long-lasting impact in our communities.
