Uncategorized

January 27, 2026January 28, 2026

Listening for Livelihoods: How Jabulani Youths for Transformation is Building Youth Ownership Through Feedback

This blog was originally published at: FeedbackLabs

What happens when young people are trusted not just to participate, but to shape the systems that serve them?

That question guided LabStorm #235, hosted by Feedback Labs, featuring Jabulani Youths for Transformation (JAY4T), a grassroots, youth-led nonprofit based in Kisumu, Kenya. JAY4T exists to turn the potential of African youth into power, transforming creativity, skills, and entrepreneurial energy into dignified livelihoods and community-led enterprises.

Founded and led by young people, JAY4T tackles the pressing issue of youth unemployment across Western Kenya. The organization has launched four youth-driven social ventures, engaged over 1,200 youth, and increased youth employment in its network by 25%, mobilizing both seed funding and in-kind support.

Through its flagship Employment Collective, JAY4T connects youth to two main pathways:

Employment Track – where participants gain hands-on experience and income through ventures like LigiOpen, Sote Tule, KaaKazini, and The Frequency Collaborative.
Entrepreneurship Track – where youth join Xchange Bazaar, a peer-to-peer mastermind network to refine ideas, share skills, and co-create solutions.

JAY4T’s model is built on deep engagement and shared ownership, with youth serving as collaborators and co-designers in every stage of program development. Their mission: to create practical pathways from unemployment to opportunity, while maintaining trust and sustainability.

As JAY4T expands its reach, the team faces a critical question:

How can we listen more deeply to youth, especially those from marginalized or low-income communities, in ways that are empowering, actionable, and sustainable?

While the organization currently gathers input through surveys and in-person conversations, not every participant responds, and some feedback can be hard to interpret. As they prepare to serve new cohorts, the JAY4T team wants to ensure that feedback directly shapes programs, reduces dependency, and builds stronger youth ownership across all stages, from enrollment to employment.

In this LabStorm, the team and participants explored one central challenge: how to strengthen feedback practices so that youth not only feel heard but see their voices reflected in action.

Discussion Highlights Co-design feedback with youth, not for youth.

Participants emphasized that the youth themselves should help design how feedback is collected, analyzed, and shared. Creating a formalized Youth Advisory Council or Entrepreneurship Council could make feedback ongoing, rather than episodic. This structure also provides leadership experience for participants and strengthens peer accountability.

Try peer-led evaluation and reflection.

Youth-to-youth conversations often yield more honest feedback. JAY4T could train a small group of youth participants in evaluation and facilitation, giving them tools to conduct focus groups, analyze data, and report findings. This approach builds capacity while fostering trust and skill development, turning evaluation into a learning experience.

Make feedback creative and visible.

To keep engagement fresh, participants suggested interactive and youth-friendly tools like:

WhatsApp polls and Instagram business accounts managed by youth teams.
Vote-up forums where participants can rank ideas and priorities (like the Employment Collective online platform).
“What We Heard / What We’ll Do” walls — both digital and physical — where youth can see how their input leads to change.
Speak Up Week, inspired by the Feedback+Atlanta Crash Course, to celebrate participants who share their feedback and ideas.

Follow the feedback trail.

One participant encouraged the team to “follow the feet”, in other words, analyze when and why participants disengage. Exit interviews, short text check-ins, or post-program surveys can help uncover barriers that keep youth from applying new skills or staying connected after training.

Use frameworks to measure transformation, not just participation.

To move beyond attendance metrics, JAY4T could use models that help track personal growth and skill application, measuring change over time in confidence, financial independence, and self-efficacy.

Build partnerships for learning and scale.

The group discussed connecting with innovation hubs like iHub Nairobi, or organizations like Generation and Youth Café, which support similar missions. Partnerships could open doors for mentorship, joint research, and expanded funding opportunities, especially for youth entrepreneurship ecosystems.

Key Takeaways

Feedback is a skill-building opportunity. Peer-led approaches help youth learn facilitation, analysis, and leadership skills.
Visibility builds trust. Showing how feedback leads to real change sustains motivation and ownership.
Creativity counts. Digital tools and public recognition can make feedback engaging and youth-centered.
Sustainability requires partnerships. Collaborating with like-minded organizations strengthens both reach and learning.

This LabStorm reminded us that listening is the first act of empowerment. For Jabulani Youths for Transformation, feedback isn’t just about program improvement; it’s about co-creating the future of youth employment in Africa.

By putting young people at the center of design, evaluation, and storytelling, JAY4T is turning feedback into a foundation for agency, innovation, and shared success.

November 28, 2025November 28, 2025

Kenya’s Youth Employment Crisis – JAY4T’s Take

Hats up, cheers and smiles all over. It’s graduation day! It’s not always ‘tarmacking’, as people say, as some fresh graduates have a plan, but then, amidst them, are young people who are left clueless about what is going to become of them after graduation. For long, youth unemployment has remained a statistic, as Kenya’s 2025 economic survey by KNBS outlined. For long, we have stuck to the statistics where we look at the unemployment rate among the youth in Kenya.

In the survey, KNBS outlined that the labour force participation rate for persons aged 15-24 years dropped from 27.3% in 2023 to 23.7% in 2024. This could either mean that young people are giving up looking for work, staying longer in school due to poor job prospects or working informally where they are not captured in the statistics.

On the other hand, there is a decline in skilled labour. The 2025 economic survey highlighted that the share of skilled labour in total manufacturing declined lower than the share of unskilled labour in 2024, indicating a demand for skilled labour. This means that Kenya’s labour market is not creating enough skilled jobs and not absorbing graduates, contributing to the skills mismatch. First-time job seekers, mostly youth, are joining a system that isn’t creating enough opportunities. This means that Kenya isn’t just facing a “youth unemployment” crisis. It’s facing a skills gap where the market demands skills youth don’t have, while also failing to create jobs that match the skills youth do have.

Why it matters to JAY4T

JAY4T’s mission is to leverage and transform the talents, skills and knowledge of the youth into social enterprise co-creation for impact, empowering them in the process. These statistics make this mission more challenging and urgent.

Here is what it means:

Youth disengagement from the labour market threatens long-term economic transformation

If young people believe that there are no real opportunities, they tend to retreat from job seeking, from education, and from innovation. This disengagement is costly, socially and economically.

Traditional training is not solving the skills mismatch

Many times, young people take up short courses to gain extra skills or to get the skills necessary for a particular job. These training programmes, which lack real-world applications, are producing skilled youth with nowhere to apply those skills. Market failure creates space for youth-led solutions

When industries aren’t creating enough decent jobs, and the public sector is overwhelmed, youth-led innovation can no longer be optional. It becomes essential.

How JAY4T is responding: Youth-Owned, Co-created Employment Social Enterprises

At JAY4T, in addition to mentorship and training, we focus on turning the skills gained during training and mentorship into co-created social enterprises. An approach which is grounded in co-creation, ownership, and employment.

Our social enterprises, KaaKazini, LigiOpen, and Sote Tule, create real employment opportunities. Through these enterprises, we tighten the skills gap through real work experience by providing hands-on experience and practical skills aligned with real market demand and problem-solving capacity.

This enables us to strengthen youth economic mobility in that, as the enterprises grow, young people develop the confidence, networks, and abilities to pursue better jobs, entrepreneurship, or leadership roles within their communities. A stepping stone to sustainable livelihoods.

September 15, 2025September 15, 2025

How JAY4T Youth Lead Their Own Transformation

At JAY4T, transformation isn’t something done for the youth – it’s something they lead themselves every day.

Jabulani Youths for Transformation empowers young people by leveraging and transforming their talents, skills, and knowledge into social enterprises that create positive impact. You have the ideas, the talent and the skills. We walk the journey with you, shaping those ideas into reality.

In this blog, we will explore how young people in JAY4T take charge of their journey and lead their own transformation.

The JAY4T approach - Why Youth are at the centre

Our asset-based approach starts with what young people already have – their existing skills, talents, and knowledge. We support youth to access entrepreneurship resources, skill development materials, networks, and tools to make their work possible.

We focus more on working with youth, not for them.

One example is our Xchange Bazaar events, a space where young people come together and share their ideas, skills, and resources in exchange for the same, much like barter trade. The main aim is to network and get what they need to grow their career or skillset. This is followed by masterminding sessions where we discuss one project at a time, brainstorming solutions to challenges, and then work alongside the youth to turn their ideas into reality.

Ways JAY4T youth lead their own transformation

Identifying Opportunities

We have young people coming from diverse communities, each with unique challenges and gaps. Many begin their transformation by spotting these issues and creating solutions that drive change.

Learning and Upskilling

Through JAY4T’s entrepreneurship program, youth are equipped with skills, resources and tools which guide them in their change-making journey.

We also have the Employment Collective, a community-driven forum that connects Kenyan Youths with job opportunities, entrepreneurship resources, and skill development materials and peer learning.

The Xchange Bazaar is another learning hub where youth trade skills. For example, “I’ll teach you Canva design if you teach me digital marketing.”

Collaborating & Networking

Youth build partnerships with peers and mentors through structured matching during our events, working in small groups to solve specific challenges.

Building a Future Mindset

Our vision is to see youth flourish beyond JAY4T, taking what they’ve learned and applying it in careers, businesses, and community leadership.

Be Part Of the Transformation

The JAY4T team invites more young people to step forward, take the lead, and shape their own journey.

Join JAY4T and become part of the co-creators. Step into your own transformation:

Register through our youth application form to join the movement.
Jump into the community forum to connect with peers, opportunities, and resources.
Showing up at our free events on Eventbrite – real talks, real skills, and real networks.

June 8, 2025June 8, 2025

Kenya’s Youth Economy? We’re already building it: JAY4T’s Contribution to AACOSE Academia 2025

Exploring youth innovation at AACOSE Academia

AACOSE Academia is an important component of the Annual Africa Conference on Social Entrepreneurship (AACOSE), organised by the Institute for Social Transformation at Tangaza University. AACOSE Academia serves as a forum for academic contributions that bridge research and practice, providing a platform for scholars and practitioners to present empirical research that contributes to Africa’s social economy and development agenda by engaging in discussions on social entrepreneurship and the social economy.

This year’s conference was centred on the theme, Social Economy: Building a Sustainable and Inclusive Future for Africa. At AACOSE Academia 2025, I had an opportunity to present research addressing a question facing millions of young Kenyans and young Africans at large. How do we turn social innovation into sustainable livelihoods?

In Kenya, youth unemployment is a major challenge facing millions of youth, full of ideas, energy, and potential. But what if we stopped seeing youth as job seekers and started recognising them as solution makers? Just what if?

Being passionate about youth empowerment and social innovation, I chose youth and social innovation as the subtheme, and focused on important topics like the social economy, youth unemployment in Kenya, social enterprises and social innovation.

Why the social economy matters

Kenya’s social economy, just like the global social economy, covers a wide range of activities and organisations that prioritise social and environmental goals over their own profit, often focusing on addressing local needs and promoting community well-being.

Unlike the profit organisations, these entities prioritise people, purpose, and collective participation. For youths, this space gives something special: the chance to create meaningful work that also solves real social challenges like unemployment, poverty, hunger, etc.

Innovation in action: Youth-led social innovation in Kenya’s social economy

In this section, I focused on Ecobana Limited, a youth-led social enterprise tackling period poverty and unemployment, while also addressing environmental degradation, by manufacturing biodegradable sanitary pads from banana fibre.

Kenyan youth are full of innovative ideas. Many of them are already building businesses and coming up with relevant local and environmentally sustainable solutions. What they often lack is long-term support, mostly from the Entrepreneur Support Organisations (ESOs). In my analysis, I found that Entrepreneur Support Organisations, which offer incubators, accelerators, and youth programs, tend to focus on short-term interactions like prize competitions, pitch events, hackathons, and award ceremonies, which are useful but insufficient for the development of these social enterprises.

Youth-led social enterprises don’t just need to be awarded and featured in articles. They need capital with patience, mentorship with depth, and support systems that understand their community-based models.

A better approach: Start with what we already have

I recommend that the youth embrace the Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) approach. While one may need external support like funding, to successfully establish a social enterprise, we must first focus on what we readily have or what we can start with to develop the social enterprise.

The Asset-Based Community Development approach is whereby a community’s existing skills, natural resources, and knowledge are leveraged to create impact. Instead of focusing on what you lack, ABCD starts with what you have. An example is Ecobana, which uses banana fibre for its social enterprise. It’s not just about empowering, it’s sustainable.

What needs to change?

To make Kenya’s youth social economy thrive, we need:

ESOs to evolve from offering one-time or short-term support to developing social enterprises, to offering yearly long-term mentorships and funding partnerships.
Youth policies that reflect the reality of rural and informal innovations, not just urban innovations alone.
To start where we are. Instead of focusing on what youth lack, we should help them realise and leverage what they already have – skills, relationships, raw materials, and ideas that solve real community problems. I advocate for an Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) approach.

My final take

Youth Innovation is not a gap – It’s a growing force. But we can’t just celebrate the wins. We must invest in the systems that make those wins possible and scalable.

As part of JAY4T, I’m committed to pushing the conversation forward. Let us match youth innovation with real, sustainable support.

About the author: Jesse Odippo

I’m Jesse Odippo, the Events and Communications manager at JAY4T – a non-profit membership organisation, which leverages and transforms the talents, skills and knowledge of Kenya’s youths into social enterprise co-creation for positive impact. I’m passionate about youth empowerment and committed to helping young people shape their futures through social innovation.

Presenting my research at AACOSE Academia 2025 was a defining moment in my journey as a youth advocate and communicator. I believe that real change starts with the community and I’m committed to helping youth realise the power they already have to lead the change.