Our Story
Built from the gap between skills and opportunity.
Wezesha Impact grew from a question its co-founders kept encountering: what happens when young people leave education or vocational training with technical skills, but without a practical pathway to earn, start a business or navigate the labour market?
A problem seen up close
In 2008, while mentoring young leaders and entrepreneurs in secondary schools, Solomon and James became acutely aware of a critical issue in their communities. Every visit to their childhood villages revealed high dropout rates, widespread youth unemployment, and low incomes—a cycle repeating through generations. Thousands of youth leave the formal school system each year, and Solomon and James knew they could have easily been among them.
With less than 12% of youth completing secondary education, many turn to formal and non-formal vocational training, hoping to create their own jobs. However, this promise often falls short due to the lack of practical entrepreneurship and workplace readiness in the national curriculum.
Driven by the belief that youth can thrive when given the right opportunities, Solomon and James founded Wezesha Impact. Their mission is to empower underserved youth by providing hands-on experiences that develop entrepreneurship, employability, and leadership skills, enabling them to break the cycle and succeed in the labour market.
What changed as we learned
Delivery experience pushed Wezesha beyond training. The model expanded to include continued enterprise support, links to markets and finance, stronger outcome measurement and partner capacity, because the real goal is livelihoods, not course completion.
Evidence changed the conversation
An independent evaluation of 2019–2021 graduates provided measurable evidence on labour-force participation, income and job creation. That evidence now informs a more deliberate scale strategy.
The next chapter: 100,000 youth by 2030
Our next phase combines direct delivery with technical assistance to local partners, so proven approaches can reach more young people while remaining locally led and quality-assured.