Our Dream:

The "MY AFRICA" dream is to change lives through transformation, creating  Social Entrepreneurs by developing Neuro Coaches throughout our societies in Africa

 

Through Vision "MY AFRICA" we aim to change the mind-set and paradigms that are currently sabotaging our  nation’s future by empowering our youth to take ownership of their lives through creative solution  focused thinking. We want to empower 10 000 youth coaches to reach 1 000 000 youth through  Neuro-Coaching. Considering that a Coaching is the 2nd fastest growing industry worldwide, we see  opportunities to create exponential impact through this vision.

 

Background:

"MY AFRICA" & Lusa Community Chest have been involved in community development for over the past 30 years  enabling a variety of sustainable development projects to help build capacity, mobilize resources and  alleviate poverty in our communities. Vision "MY AFRICA" integrates well with the vision of Lusa to restore  hope and transform lives. "MY AFRICA" & Lusa Community Chest has successfully implemented youth development  programs with over 10 000 youth in the past 10 years.

As a team we are  passionate about youth development, leadership development and the transformative power of  Neuro-Coaching. We are driven to deliver excellence on every project based on our core values of  inclusivity, integrity, honesty, transparency and responsibility

Problem Statement:

This unemployment is negatively affecting morale of youth across the country,  resulting in participation in criminal activity, drug abuse, violence and riots that lead to high mortality  rates amongst the youth. The youth represents a powerful resource of the country provided that they  are supported and able to become active members of society. Youth Development plays an important  role in addressing the issues mentioned above 

MY AFRICA Lusa SEI Vision "MY AFRICA"

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Community Development & Social Entrepreneurship

Ignited the Vision "MY AFRICA"...

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-The "MY AFRICA" dream is to change lives through transformation of positive mindsets, developing Social Entrepreneurs through Neuro Coaching...

-Through "MY AFRICA", we aim to change the mind-set and paradigms that are currently sabotaging our African continents future.

-Millions of our youth in Africa and uneducated and unemployed, resulting in them turning to drugs, crime, prostitution, etc

-MY AFRICA will empower youth to take ownership of their lives through creative solution & focused thinking.

-MY AFRICA will change the paradigm set from VICTOM to VICTOR

-"MY AFRICA" and our partners Lusa Social Entrepreneurship Institute provides a practical learning and development programmes to individuals who are committed to making a difference in society. The Institute endeavours  to provide much needed support to the growing social sector in Africa and the entire AFRICA.

-Our social impact programs offer participants opportunities to have direct contact training and skills development at our training centres, coupled with hands on experience at non-profit organisations,  thereby providing a holistic approach to social entrepreneurship. Our mission is to help improve lives by mobilising the caring power of our communities to advance the common good.

-Our experience of over 30 years involved in community development programs enables a variety of sustainable projects to help build capacity, mobilize resources and alleviate poverty in our communities.

-Using football platforms we will educate football players to become Social Entrepreneurs through practical learning and development programs. The ultimate Neuro Coach will then infiltrate communities and ignite future Social Entrepreneurs of Africa

-We want to empower 100 youth football players to become Neuro coaches and to reach 100 000 youth through our MY AFRICA Neuro-Coaching Platform.

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"MY AFRICA" Lusa Social Entrepreneurship Institute

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"MY AFRICA" Lusa Social Entrepreneurship Institute provides practical learning and development programmes to  individuals and organisations committed to making a difference in society. The Institute endeavours  to provide much needed support to the growing social sector in South Africa and the entire AFRICA

Our social impact programs offer participants opportunities to have direct contact training and skills  development at our training centre coupled with hand-on experience at non-profit organisations,  thereby providing a holistic approach to social entrepreneurship. Our mission is to help improve lives  by mobilising the caring power of our communities to advance the common good.

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Who is a Social Entrepreneur?

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This is someone attuned to both business and the big picture; who applies his or her business expertise  to create social value; and who provides smart solutions to community problems by thinking like an  entrepreneur. Above and beyond business “as usual,” they can leverage their skills and resources to  address serious needs, expand their impact and bolster the communities, neighbourhoods, schools and  services in the places they do business. There are studies that show a 20% increase in revenue for  businesses when there is a social cause tied to their business. Consumers will be more willing to purchase  products or services when the social cause resonates with them. Our methods, framework and support  systems are focused on helping entrepreneurs make a practical, positive and lasting impact while  developing strategic alliances.

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Over the last two decades "MY AFRICA" Lusa Community Chest has become an LEADERS in Community and youth  development in the South African context. Through various successful interventions we have  numerous impact studies highlighting the transformational change some of our programmes have  achieved with youth in marginalized societies. The majority of youth going through our programmes  have either secured employment, studied further or started their own businesses. This is further  evidence of how the youth took ownership of their own destinies and utilized the skills and tools  taught to change their lives. Learnings from our programmes include an in depth understanding of  Neuro- Plasticity, Resilience, Personal Responsibility, Developing Self Awareness, Increasing Emotional  Intelligence, Solution thinking and Social skills. The training is practical and empowers our youth to  integrate the learnings in their lives.

 

 

Demand to address the problem:

The South African National Youth Policy 2015-"MY AFRICA" highlights the urgency and need for youth  development programmes and interventions to mitigate our current crises. Many youth summits have  been held to find solutions to the ongoing challenge. Several agencies and Non-profit organisations  are currently involved in youth development programmes. Although some impact has been achieved  there is still an unacceptably high number of youth who are not active in education, employment or  training. Public Sector, Civil Society and the Private Sector are all trying their best to address some of  the issues on various levels. "MY AFRICA" Lusa can facilitate and coordinate various stakeholders in a focused and  strategic effort to achieve greater results. The unemployed youth challenge is driving different  stakeholders to engage with each other to come up with sustainable solutions that could ultimately  eradicate poverty.

 

 

Solution Overview:

Vision "MY AFRICA" will be implemented through "MY AFRICA" LusaSEI, an extention of "MY AFRICA" Lusa Community Chest, with the  goal to empower and transform the lives of 2 000 000 youth in South-Africa over 5 years through  coaching training or being coached personally by a trained coach. We believe that the training will be  life changing in terms of development of emotional intelligence, leadership skills, development of a  growth mind-set, solutions thinking and personal resilience. The strategy is to train and empower and  certify 100 000 youth coaches in 9 provinces who in turn will train and empower the 2 000 000 youth.  Our key indicators for success would show a reduction in many societal ailments such as  unemployment, crime, violence, drug abuse, obesity, depression, diabetes, teenage pregnancies and  school drop-out rates. This will be brought about because of the skills and tools the youth will acquire  through our intervention. The target population is from marginalized communities where youth are  currently experiencing a sense of hopelessness and despair. Through Vision "MY AFRICA" we will create  transformational shifts amongst our target audience by empowering them to move from a victim  mentality to a growth mind-set. Successful student coaches will be able to practice their skills and start  creating opportunities for generating income. Our collective dream is to raise the next generation of  leaders for South-Africa. The benefits not only extend to the youth but to their families and  communities and ultimately the nation as a whole.

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Diversity, Equity and Inclusion:

Vision "MY AFRICA" will focus on empowering youth from all sectors of community irrespective of race,  religion, income and gender. Differently-abled youth will also be invited and encouraged to participate  and venues will be accessible to them. We will conduct our interventions in marginalized communities  to ensure that travelling costs is not an issue. We will also be working in partnership with faith based  organisations, schools and non-profit organisations to source their infrastructure to spread the word  and to utilize existing facilities for training and engagement. Our facilitators will be representative of  the community in which they engage to ensure ease of facilitation in local dialects. Our current  network of facilitators, community partners, volunteers and civil society partners are all inclusive and  diverse members of our society.

 

 

Theory of Change:

Our dream is to empower and transform the lives of 2 000 000 youth in South-Africa over 5 years. We  believe that Neuro-Coaching training has shown the most transformational impact over the last 5  years in several of our community interventions. The interventions will be life changing in terms of  development of emotional intelligence, self-awareness, leadership skills, resilience and changing  mind-sets from a victim mentality to a growth mind-set. We will train 20 000 certified youth coaches  per year (100 000 over a 5-year period) these will in turn train a further 20 youth per coach to become  potential youth coaches. We will use blended learning platforms to empower the participants as  certified youth coaches. In order to reach the 2 000 000 youth across the country we will engage with  community partners, schools, institutes of higher learning and community leaders to source trainers  and youth coaches as well as infrastructure. Our theory of change is based on the assumption that we  can mobilize sufficient facilitators and youth to ensure success. We also assume that once the youth  complete their training that they will be better equipped to find jobs, and change their lives for the  better. An extended benefit of Vision "MY AFRICA" is that jobs will be created for between 40 and 80  facilitators as well as 100 000 youth coaches who will receive a small stipend that will enable them to  start their own businesses.

 

 

Evidence of Effectiveness:

Over the last decade we have been actively involved in youth development programmes in and outside  of school as well as in and outside of South-Africa because it is well stated fact that the most serious  threat to a prosperous South Africa is the high rates of unemployment among young people. The South  African community through the government's National Youth Policy 2015-"MY AFRICA" and various other  youth programmes have recognized the need to focus on youth development in order to empower  young people of the country. We believe that providing coaching skills to 100 000 South African youth  can greatly contribute to the countries success because coaching has been widely purported to  contribute to sustained transformational shifts. "MY AFRICA" Lusa understands the importance of measuring the  impact of all our interventions and have numerous impact studies reporting the difference our  programmes have made.

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Most of our programmes are evaluated by the Centre of Applied Management Science to provide  objective comments to our Investors on the outcomes of our programmes. Feedback from investors,  stakeholders and beneficiaries have highlighted an improvement in attitude, improvement in  performance, reduction in negative behaviour, increased personal responsibility, reduction in drug  abuse and violence as well as the youth having a new sense of direction and purpose. We have many  success stories of participants changing their lives around and either finding employment, furthering  their studies or becoming self-employed- pointing to the efficacy of the solution for bringing about  transformational change through coaching.

 

 

Monitoring and Evaluations:

Our monitoring and evaluation process will be a multi-tiered approach. We will have internal coaches  and assessors who will monitor the progress of our coaching facilitators to ensure their training is up  to standard. We will source additional coaches from COMENSA (Coaching and Mentoring South-Africa)  who will coach and support the coaching facilitators on their performance management throughout  the programme. The coaching facilitators will be evaluated by the youth that they train. The youth in  turn will be evaluated by the coaching facilitators as well as their clients. The facilitators will be tasked  with ensuring that the youth complete their portfolios of evidence for certification. This will include  the submission of summative and formative assessments as well as evaluations forms from clients and  attendance registers for the training and coaching done. The results from these evaluations will be  collated on a quarterly basis and learning outcomes reviewed to look at ways to adapt or improve the  program for specific contexts. Feedback will be done via the on-line platform as well as written  evaluations. Our assessors will conduct one-on-one interviews with sample groups. We will partner  with graduate students from local universities, to conduct third party assessments on an annual basis.

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Scaling:

Our current programme have been implemented successfully in different provinces in South-Africa as  well as 3 other countries beyond South-Africa. We believe this programme could easily be expanded  and implemented over a wide geographical area. Through our Online Learning Platform and the  faciliites for training using Zoom, we can offer trainings to hundreds of student simultaneously.  Thanks to the Covid 19 pandemic we are "MY AFRICA" in a unique position to offer free training to thousands  of students at a time. The training programme will be facilitated online once a week for two hours for  10 weeks. 20 hrs face to face training plus 20 hours on the online learning platform plus 40 hours of  practicals and their formative and summative assessments will award them enough time and  experience to be certified as youth coaches and to register with COMENSA (Coaching and Mentoring  South-Africa) as student coaches.

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Durability of Impact:

Vision ‘MY AFRICA” will have a huge impact on the mind-sets of 2 000 000 youth in South-Africa. We believe  that the ripple effect of this intervention will be felt for many years after the programme has  concluded. We also are confident that the youth coaches will utilize the skills acquired through Vision  "MY AFRICA" for the rest of their lives, continuing to empower their immediate spheres of influence as well  as having a positive impact in their local communities. Ultimately this is our plan to raise the next  generation of leaders for our nation. Although this programme cannot eradicate poverty and its  subsequent effects in 5 years we do believe that these empowered youths will have the ability to  change their lives as well as the lives of their children going forward.

Through Vision "MY AFRICA" we also want to empower young women to find their voice and to ultimately  raise the next generation of leaders. Vision "MY AFRICA" is our dream of creating an inclusive, nonracist, non-  sexist, non-discriminatory society in South-Africa.

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