Capacity Building and Youth Empowerment: The Design Thinking Approach

The Covid 19 pandemic has disrupted all business verticals, all communities, all age groups and economic classes. One of the areas of acute disruption is visible in the youth generation, the current high school and college bound students. Suddenly, their future has been clouded by the complete lack of opportunities on the one hand and how and what skills will be  necessary to address the new challenges of the future. They have seen disruption in the lives of those around them and have found it difficult to comprehend how this will impact their own futures. Interestingly, it is this age group that constitutes the future of communities, states, and countries, globally. They are, after all, the future work force and will soon be the drivers of change, development and economies. Yet, in the current situation, any opportunities to gain practical knowledge, work experience, and income have evaporated for this youth generation.

The Chamber and its partners seek to entrust this age group, today’s youth, with skills to help build capacity by bringing together key constituents in a unique way. The objective is to engage, excite, and empower this generation by enhancing their knowledge base and their problem solving abilities while building confidence and self-worth, acknowledging the role they have to play in tomorrow’s decision making processes and as future consumers. Quite simply put, to ‘employ’ their minds to efficiently seek solutions to address social, business, and community issues as seen from the eyes of their generation. To say that the younger generation thinks and behaves differently is an understatement. Their views on topics from the environment to economics, from social issues to social media, from community building to community caring all demonstrate a very different set of priorities and the need consequently to approach existing challenges through different approaches. 

Our team will bring together and encourage all kinds of businesses, NGO’s, private and public schools districts, law enforcement, who stand to benefit from the insights of the youth generation or ‘consultants.’ This is a different slant to corporate social responsibility and an investment in tomorrow’s generation by ‘listening’ to them and their suggestions by encouraging them to explore their minds by introducing them to the nature of challenges ahead in a changing global and local environment.  This will be done by compensating these ‘youth consultants’ financially to find creative solutions to the problems/challenges/concerns that organizations are facing today for tomorrow. Typically these should be issues that are in some form related to or impact the youth generation as their insights would help corporate or organizational enterprises build/change their strategies/approaches.)

Process

The above will be done using a simplified Design thinking approach to help identify/solve issues/problems. Design thinking is a process for creative problem solving. By using design thinking, one can pull together what is desirable from a human point of view with what is technologically feasible and economically viable. Rather than teach students basic skills, the objective of the Design thinking approach will be to help them to think ‘outside the box,’ understand how to apply the thought process to and in different situations, how to gather and filter information through research and discussion, build prototypes and models for solutions and develop effective presentations for the client to adopt. The process also relies on the use of technology to help build prototypes and make presentations.