As it is our culture at Yes I Can, we start each year with a symposium during which we touch of wide variety of digital skills we believe students should learn to be either entrepreneurs or job market ready as soon as they graduate. From this symposium, we enroll a couple of participants and mentor them for a year.
This is done to breach the gap between classic school system education and the actual realities of the economy. It has been establish that the education system in place does a poor job of preparing the Cameroon youth, hence our ever skyrocketing rates of unemployment.
The unemployed youths eventually turn to all sort of illegal activities just in a attempt to secure their daily bread. For most, menial labour intensive tasks/jobs are not an option as they’ll rather turn to robbery, prostitution, drugs etc. This doesn’t always have to be our narrative and at Yes I Can, we are striving to change that.
I put a particular stress on our data and privacy concerns as we interact on our smartphones and various social media networks. We use social media for free but pay the price in our private data. This data on which big corporations leverage on to dispense ads about anything and everything.
With key insights on our usage of and interactions on the internet, a data profile can be coined for about every individual. This profile dictates what you see and don’t see in terms of ads on the internet.
The participants listened so keenly and I was pleased with the avalanche of questions that followed. During the talk I gave a model on how to market any product from A to Z on the internet and we networked later on. I had the opportunity to talk one on one with some participants who shared amazing dreams and aspirations they had with me.
I gave my professional advice and words of encouragement to these aspiring entrepreneurs and made a promise to assist them as much as I could.
The day entered with the YIC Team and facilitators handing out certificates of participation and we took a traditional family picture to commemorate the day.
Yet another successful event!
