ABOUT THE PROJECT
In today’s fast-paced business world ‘entrepreneurship’ is promoted as one of the most popular ‘career-paths’ for young adults.
It is common knowledge though that starting and managing a successful business is no easy feat especially for Youth Entrepreneurs who require a range of skills, knowledge, and tools to make their ideas a reality. They also require a space that allows them to take their ideas to the next level and to acquire the resources and insights to enable them to engage in prototyping activities.
Design Thinking is a way of interpretation and application. It is an effective tool and a methodology that guides young entrepreneurs to develop and adapt ideas and challenges through a structured and creative approach to solve problems. It is even more effective when facilitated in a safe space that allows for imaginative expression and for a contribution of many ideas to become part of a collective. It is especially effective when used and applied to solve challenges.
The I-Can Centre is deeply entrenched as an active-in-the-community, renowned public access and digital skills training facility which in turn is hailed by many as a beacon of light in the community since its inception in Elsies River 7 years ago. Its reputation lead to being awarded the rights to facilitate the programme in its own name thus giving rise to the ‘I-Can-Make-It Design Thinking, Prototype Development And Social Entrepreneurship Skills Programme’.
The intense curriculum covered the the period March to June 2023. Its unique value proposition is that it would have 6 winning groups who in turn would receive mentorship up to end of November 2023 thus adding to the uniqueness of the curriculum and making it a first of its kind for the Cape Flats. The successful applicants were recruited on the basis of submitting a community challenge, added to which they needed to state if they believed that it was possible to resolve the challenge with the right support, tools, resources, technical capacity, networks, guidance and even funding to create a meaningful socio-economic solution that would benefit their community.
Once the course started, the passion for learning came across loud and clear from the social innovation youth entrepreneurs as each one found their voice in-class, in online sessions and on the group-chats. After each Design Thinking session the chats went abuzz as learners contributed their breakthrough and often thought provoking highlights which was testimony to the shifts in their thinking as one could literally see and feel the before and after development taking place for individuals and the comfort and safety felt through the sharing of their experiences and shifts with their peers and their facilitators.
In-class they worked on a range of ‘lets find a new spin to tried and tested solutions, as well as coming up with out of the box, new, feasible solutions to community challenges under the guidance of their facilitators YSay and Cyan Concept Development and with added mentorship and support from the I-Can Centre CEO, Mr Llewellyn Scholtz.
The I-Can-Make-It Design Thinking programme allowed its entrepreneur learners exposure to participate in a training programme within a creative environment aimed at breaking barriers to conceptualising, defining, ideating, designing and testing their products and / or services and / or hypothesis-proposals to the point of ‘a developed prototype to take to market’.
Genesis Community IT Initiative | I-CAN Centre’s aim was to empower young entrepreneurs from the Cape Flats / Cape Metro with a unique and innovative ‘Design Thinking’ training tool with the purpose and outcome to spotlight community challenges and steer the entrepreneurs towards a prototype solution.