Benjamin Rukwenji, the co-founder of Boundless Minds, says that its creation was inspired by the zeal to help young adults acquire skill sets that can help them create their own businesses or make them suitable employees after school.
Created in 2017, Boundless Minds equips young people with soft skills such as critical thinking , problem solving, creativity and mentorship that is in contrast with the standard Ugandan education system. With a number of experts in different fields, young people gain mentorship programmes and are able to discover what they want to pursue as professionals and become successful at them.
Having passed through Ugandan education,Rukwenji says that at University, he was still clueless about the career he wanted to pursue as an adult. Staying with a white friend of his in the same age bracket, he was surprised to find out that his white friend had traveled two countries before coming to volunteer in Uganda.
Her exposure enabled her to interact with older people of different cultures. By 21 she could be able to acquire an actual job with her experience.
“I thought that similarly in Uganda, there has to be a program to make sure that young people can start as early as they can to experience work in some way. So we started with the Senior 6 vacation programme and we have grown to have a shop that works with young people from 3 years to 16, a digital platform that provides mentorship for young people who can access the programmes anywhere anytime,” he said.
Apparently boundless minds has gathered over 300 mentors in a space of 5 years and has mentored over 150 youths in Kampala annually. These are advised to extend their knowledge to their counterparts in their home communities.
“Boundless was created based on an idea that it's possible. The bazungus don't get ahead of us because they are more intelligent than us but also partly because they are more exposed than we are. I decided that there has to be a way for us to do the same with our young people as early as they can and it has worked out perfectly.We have alumni who have started their businesses,with some in senior 6 vacation while others have found jobs,”
Rukwenji appealed to people working with different companies and having different skills aged between 30 - 45 years to sign up as mentors and young adults to apply for the mentorship programmes online to gain these skill sets in areas of interest.
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