Rockefeller Foundation & Homeboyz Foundation‘s Niko Job, is an digital campaign that aim to alert high potential but disadvantaged youth in Kenya to online work opportunities and provide them the tools they require to successfully access online jobs.
The two firms aim to to improve livelihoods and improved social and economic benefits for the youth and their families have launched a campaign to advance their Digital Jobs Africa initiative in Kenya by catalyzing sustainable Information Communication Technology-enabled (ICT) employment opportunities and skills training for high potential but disadvantaged youth.
Digital Jobs Africa seeks to improve the lives of one million people in six countries in Africa through jobs and skills training for high potential youth. Employment of African youth will generate greater social and economic benefits and have a powerful multiplier effect by helping improve the welfare of households and catalyzing indirect job creation for their communities.
The Homeboyz Foundation aims to achieve this through launching an awareness raising campaign that will result in young people being able to log onto online work sites through the creation of a digital campaign that will target hundreds of thousands of young people in Kenya. The campaign will alert young people to the opportunity presented by online work, contain testimonials of young Kenyans who are earning an income from online work and highlight the benefits for young people and their families.
Homeboyz Foundation, through its affiliates Homeboyz Media, has the necessary “street cred” with the urban youth in Kenya as well as the necessary tools and resources to successfully implement this awareness campaign. We talk to over 200,000 youth on a daily basis through Homeboyz Radio and Homeboyz social media and hence we have a thorough understanding of the youth space in Kenya. A good example is the YHub portal, which is currently reaching out to vast amounts of Kenyan youth by giving them critical access to career and job training resources in conjunction with Microsoft’s Youth Spark program. We have leveraged this portal and made it our platform for the awareness raising campaign so that youth are alerted to the opportunities available and have access to tools that allow them to better navigate these websites, which in turn connect them to jobs.
The firm’s youth driven approach will have the capacity of reaching at least one hundred thousand – plus youth from urban centers across the country interested in accessing the resources provided by this interactive network model for employment and career development. This partnership model (Rockefeller & Homeboyz Foundation) and delivery interface will be the first of its kind on the sub-Saharan continent, and will serve as the prototype that can be customized and rolled out to other African countries after successful implementation in Kenya.
The firm will reach its target market by creating videos that would capture the youth’s attention in a sustained way and understand how they can get the job by watching the YHub Awareness video and have the How to instructions allowing them to make optimal use of the online training and employment opportunities available.
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In partnership with the Rockefeller Foundation, The Homeboyz Foundation will embrace on a series of “Niko Job” communications within the YHub framework. Niko Job is an urban phrase used to denote “working” or “Getting busy/ I’m busy”. It will consistently encourage the youth to seize the opportunities in digital careers around them. The Niko Job communications aimed at raising awareness will include:
- Video ‘webisodes’ which will be shot and disseminated through digital media
- Leveraging social media tools to Reach out to as many relevant youth as possible
- An official launch targeting strategic stakeholders as a means of raising support and awareness outside the virtual space.
- The Niko Job initiative will leverage the YHub during this awareness raising campaign to prod youth towards the online employment opportunities and also to aide in reducing stigma around these virtual prospects.
