Savvy has entered into a partnership agreement with Kenya Private Sector Alliance (KEPSA) to train 1000 young Kenyans on how to build sustainable and innovative businesses.
KEPSA is the apex organization of the private sector in Kenya. It supports Kenyan businesses with opportunities for training, networking, financial linkages, mentorship, coaching, access to markets, value chains, and investment opportunities.
The AJIRA Digital Program, which is run by the Kenyan government, is what brought Savvy and KEPSA together. The goal of this program is to make Kenya an attractive place for multinational companies to hire workers and to grow and encourage local and regional companies and the public sector to create digital and digitally-enabled work.
Furthermore, Chidi Nwaogu of Savvy said about the partnership, “Our partnership with KEPSA through the Ajira Digital Platform aims to train an extra 1,000 young Kenyans to build innovative, impact-driven businesses that are both sustainable and new.”
Chidi explained further. “Having trained and supported 506 Kenyan entrepreneurs already through the Savvy program, our partnership with KEPSA seeks to take that number to at least 1,500 Kenyan entrepreneurs by the end of 2022.” By providing these entrepreneurs training in business development, communications, and product design, Savvy will support them to become successful entrepreneurs and changemakers in Kenya and Africa. ”
So far, Savvy has trained and supported 506 Kenyan entrepreneurs.
Rachel Gathu, who is in charge of private sector engagement and partnerships at KEPSA, says that they are always helping to connect organizations like Savvy so that they can form long-lasting partnerships that help each other.
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She continued, “KEPSA is constantly facilitating linkage between organizations like Savvy disclosed, to create lasting and meaningful partnerships to add value to each other.”
Rachel disclosed, “Ajira is an initiative of the government of Kenya under the ministry of ICT, innovations, and youth affairs that is being funded by the Mastercard Foundation and implemented by different partners, including KEPSA. The project’s mission is to enable five million Kenyans to access locally available digital and digitally-enabled jobs through linkages and digital skills training.
Backed by the Roddenberry Foundation, the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation, and the International Telecommunication Union, Savvy was founded to help at least unemployed professionals around the world transition into entrepreneurship.
The program equips them with the knowledge, skills, tools, resources, support network, and community fellowship to build sustainable, innovative, and profitable impact-driven businesses as a way to reduce global unemployment that the COVID-19 pandemic has widened.
Savvy’s Achievement in the Past Years
It’s been two years since the launch of the Savvy Global Fellowship Program for Aspiring and Early-Stage Entrepreneurs. who are entrepreneurs? employs
So far, the program has accepted, trained, and supported over 7,500 Fellows from 156 countries.
A post from the organization says that these were chosen from more than 90,000 applications. The Savvy program is available in 111 languages and has received over 90,000 applications. As of this writing, over 7,500 people from 156 countries have been chosen and trained. These people have gone on to start over 2,200 businesses in different fields and regions.
Savvy has shown that they want to use new sustainable models to solve some of the world’s most critical problems.
The group said that it measures its impact every year and reports how it helps young entrepreneurs solve problems in their own communities.
Today, Savvy has become a community of over 8,500 changemakers, which includes the 1,041 members of the Savvy mentorship team, who, according to Savvy, “are experienced entrepreneurs with post-revenue businesses, volunteering with Savvy because they want to put their fingers on the pulse of the younger generation of entrepreneurs.”
The Savvy program has helped 7,511 passionate young individuals start 2,513 innovative and sustainable impact-driven businesses by providing them with the knowledge, skills, tools, resources, support, and community. This organization now employs over 4,000 more individuals and believes it is “mitigating global unemployment, which the COVID-19 pandemic has broadened.”
What is Savvy Saying?
The organization made an announcement on its LinkedIn page to report on its initiatives and the problems they are solving.
The announcement states, “In this second year of operation, we moved the Savvy e-learning platform from shared hosting to a high-powered dedicated server to improve its stability and up-time.” We’ve provided data bundles to 28 Savvy Fellows from low-income communities. These data bundles helped them participate in and complete the Savvy program. And through the Savvy Prize, we provided equity-free funding and support worth $4,450 to four Savvy participants with the most innovative business ideas and execution strategies.
The statement continues, “Finally, we expanded our 22-week entrepreneurial training curriculum to include 10 product design modules, taking the entire learning duration of Savvy to 32 weeks.” These were possible using funding from the Roddenberry Foundation, the International Telecommunications Union, and the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation.
“Now, we are focused on achieving more milestones. We are working to secure a partnership with a state-owned organization in Africa to help at least 300 young individuals build sustainable businesses. The statement concluded, “We will also be facilitating weekly online classes via Zoom, to be given by renowned entrepreneurs from diverse regions, who will volunteer to teach our Fellows from their vast experience.”