Safaricom announces the second season of Blaze Be Your Own Boss after successful debut

 19 year old Valentine Nekesa who won the first season of BLAZE BYOB reality show. The last boss standing walked away with a grand prize of KES 5 Million that included KES 3 million in capital and KES 2 million in the form of mentor ship, financial advice and business support.

Safaricom has today announced the second season of its youth network BLAZE Be Your Own Boss (BYOB) that will kick off with the first regional summit scheduled for this weekend in Meru County.

Following a successful first season that saw 43% of Kenyan youth join the BLAZE platform and 44,000 young people under the age of 26 attend the countrywide summits, the second season aims to inspire Kenyan youth through inspiration and guidance by some of Kenya’s most successful young entrepreneurs.

“We are glad that the first edition of BLAZE BYOB was a success. We now want to build on the learnings we picked to improve the second edition. Key among the changes, we will be introducing three new areas that will help participants in building successful businesses and appreciating the need to give back to the society,” said Sylvia Mulinge, Director -Consumer Business, Safaricom.

The theme this year will be Greatness Requires Internal Toughness (G.R.I.T). The second season of BLAZE BYOB will focus on three key areas; to mentor and train youth by giving them the tools required to be successful at BYOB Creation Camps.

Secondly, to inspire youth to follow their passions and introduce them to relatable mentors who can talk about their personal journeys and how they found G.R.I.T to be successful at BLAZE BYOB Summits and lastly BYOB will introduce BLAZE CSR Fridays, a session aimed at teaching the youth to give back to the society.

The creation camps aims to have 350 participants with a pre-screening in Meru where youth will have the chance to give a 5 min elevator pitch about their business ideas to a panel of category experts with an aim to impart tangible skills onto the youth.

As the final part of the Creation Camp and ahead of the summit, all participants, mentors and performing artists, will go into five pre-identified high schools and have a 1-hour mentorship session, giving out a donation as part of the CSR projects.

Some of the mentors expected at the Meru summit are; Jibril Blessing-producer and videographer, Njugush- Comedian and actor, Abel Mutua- content developer, Julian- musician, Wycliffe Waweru- entrepreneur and bicycle manufacturer and Caleb Karuga, an Agribusiness entrepreneur.