Project Scope

The YouthLifeShift Project is designed as a continuing education and learnership programme for participating youths. In the course of its three major programmes, participating youths are exposed to special skills development activities involving coaching, mentoring and coach-training engagements. This is in addition to participating in leadership, entrepreneurship and business training workshops.

The three major programmes of Youth LifeShift Project are highlighted below.

1. Youth Coaching and Mentoring Programme

This is a specially designed six month coaching solutions programme, which involves 12 sessions of practical one-on-one coaching and mentoring engagements, as well as professional youth coach-training programme running concurrently. Each participant will be assigned a qualified professional coach who will facilitate the one-on-one coaching sessions and youth coach mentoring engagements over the six month programme.

The beneficiaries of this programme are young Africans aged between 20 and 30 years that must pass through a selection process. Importantly, they must demonstrate the desire to use their acquired knowledge and continuing mentorship in the course of the programme to train, coach, mentor, and influence, and model younger youths, particularly teenagers.

The four key areas that the youth coaching and mentoring programme focuses on for youth development and transformation are highlighted below.

• Mindshift: Self-development, mindfulness, self awareness and consciousness, courage, communication, self mastery, tenacity, and self-confidence.
• Skillshift: Life, professional and technical skills development – adaptive technological skills, special entrepreneurial skills, and technical skills.
• Leadershift: Leadership skills development, emotional intelligence (EQ), relationship management, coach-mentorship and coach-leadership.
• Wealthshift: Financial literacy and personal finance, investment planning and wealth creation.

The professional youth coach-training programme exposes youths to structured coaching processes, which help to position them as active advocates of youth coaching and mentoring for improved leadership, management, communication and relationship skills. The programme, which also involves supervised practical coaching engagements and submission of a written research project further exposes the youths to challenges that compel their creativity in solving problems. This is in turn enables them to be better informed, in making decisions that facilitate performance improvement.

2. Youth Entrepreneurship Support (“YES”)

The Youth Entrepreneurship Support (“YES”) programme is a business growth support initiative for budding youth entrepreneurs and owners of micro and small businesses, providing business building tips, tools and techniques for profitability and sustainability. These are offered through entrepreneurship development training programmes, business growth workshops, as well as special coaching and mentoring interventions for youth entrepreneurs and business owners.

The particular areas that the Youth Entrepreneurship Support (“YES”) cover in providing entrepreneurship development and business growth facilitation are listed below:

• Development of personal business foundations and motivations for success
• Managing capability, commitment, credibility and consistency in business
• The entrepreneur as a strategic business developer, marketer and manager
• Entrepreneurship skills gap challenges and solutions
• Strategic goal setting and business vision planning
• Principles of financial intelligence, financial planning and business finance
• Market and marketing intelligence and strategic niche marketing planning
• Business intelligence, systemisation and autopilot planning
• Customer attraction, retention, referral and service strategies
• Business improvement technologies and digital applications

The Youth Entrepreneurship Support (“YES”) programme, which serves as a platform for business building and entrepreneurship developmental provides insights to build capacity, enhance performance and activate business success on a continuing basis.

3. Teen Action-Learning Programme

Most people that have benefited from the transformational process of professional coaching interventions often expressed the view that they wish they were exposed to coaching much earlier in their lives and careers. This is a testimony of the power of coaching in build an individual’s personal awareness, thereby creating opportunities to focus on areas of need for improvement.

This is a realistic justification to expose teenagers to the practical benefits of coaching, if the opportunities exist. That is the main thrust of the Teen Action-Learning Programme, which is focused on introducing structured coaching and mentoring as a special education and life skills development offering to teenagers and high school students.

The Teen Action-Learning Programme is planned to be carried out in partnership with educational institutions and relevant management authorities in the respective localities. Apart from the engagement of experienced professional coaches, this programme will deploy youth coaches and mentors that have been trained in the Youth LifeShift Project as coaches, mentors and facilitators. The goal is to support and promote teenagers and high school students who shall be beneficiaries of this programme to strive to be better versions of themselves.