YouthENGage is a youth engagement and research platform accessible online and on mobile phone. The vision of the platform is to 1) create a cloud-based, chatbot-assisted platform that would cater for multiple communication channels for youth with government, business, civil society and themselves, 2) through research and real-time analytics build a better understanding of the challenges youth in Zimbabwe face. Also building partnerships to respond on youth challenges, views and mentorship.
Youth make up 62% of Zimbabwe's population yet there are no spaces to share their views and opinions on issues that affect their livelihood such as unemployment, poor delivery of services, and crime. Secondly there is a lack of reliable and consistent data on the size and particulars of these challenges. This makes it difficult, if not impossible, to develop effective and sustainable public policy initiatives, effective entrepreneurial programs. It creates public and private policy blind spots.
YouthENGage platform will collect data online, offline and totally digitalizes youth engagement. This data and information will be used to build common interests on addressing some of the common challenges from government, business and CSOs. This is intended to provide feedback on these common challenges, virtual mentorship and development of tailored entrepreneurship programs. The data and information collected will also be used to influence public policy on common issues affecting youth.
Firstly the platform will amplify the voice of youth and the challenges they face. It will help to put onto the spot light evidence based research that shows the common major challenges that youth face. It is expected to create a youth -centered approach towards youth programming for both public and private sectors at a system- level, people- level and institutional- level. YouthENGage is expected to reach over two million youth in Zimbabwe.
