Trailblazer Plus (+), the next evolution of the enke: Trailblazer Program

Trailblazer Plus (+), the next evolution of the enke: Trailblazer Program

The core of the Trailblazer Program is to connect, equip and inspire high school learners to design and lead social change in their home communities. The Trailblazer Program is a space where youth from different socio-economic backgrounds learn from each other, develop ideas to tackle social issues they are the most passionate about. Through Trailblazer, youth build and apply power skills – social and emotional competencies and leadership skills – that contribute to improving their chances of success post-school. Trailblazer go on to implement Community Action Projects over 9 months while receiving support and mentorship from enke. 

In July 2022 we launched Trailblazer+ (Trailblazer Plus Program), an exciting revamp and next step in the evolution of our flagship enke: Trailblazer Program for High School Learners. The Trailblazer Plus Program (Trailblazer+) engages high school students to drive education improvement programs. Trailblazer+ has three mutually re-enforcing objectives:

1. To raise the chances of school completion
2. To improve employment prospects, and
3. To develop a civically-minded population of youth that can drive constructive institutional change.

Historical Evolution of the Trailblazer Program

The first evolution of Trailblazer was in 2013, when the enke: Youth Award Program was renamed “enke: Trailblazer” and delegates became Trailblazers. We made the training of Igniters (former Presenters and Facilitators) more robust, standardized, improved the curriculum, and streamlined the enke Forum elements and experience. We would conduct biannual reviews and updates to ensure the Trailblazer Curriculum was contextually relevant and up to date with the latest research. By 2019, after 10 years of running Trailblazer, we had trained 429 Trailblazers whose Community Action Projects positively impacted over 100,000 people in their home communities. We also integrated Trailblazer elements in a new initiative called YANDiSA (Youth Accelerating National Development in School Advancement).

Then, in March 2020 came COVID-19.

No one can refute the immense impact that COVID-19 had on people’s livelihoods, education and our work as nonprofit organizations. Our programs were primarily delivered face-to-face, in-person and with extensive travel bring young people together across the country. To keep going, we had to change how we did everything. The result? The evolution of Trailblazer into a community-based model enabled us to continue with its impact. Interestingly, COVID-19 accelerated our plans to increase impact. 

Why Trailblazer Plus (Trailblazer+)

Over the past decade, there has been growing attention to youth not in employment, education, and training (NEETs). To tackle the youth NEET issue it is essential to address the issue of the many school leavers needing help to chart their way to work. There is also evidence that once youth have left school, it is significantly harder to course correct. It is therefore important to redirect youth from a sense of hopelessness to one of hope and personal agency. Reaching youth while still in school is an efficient and impactful way of addressing the country’s NEET challenges. 

There is a strong correlation between education and employment prospects. The unemployment rate for South Africans varies depending on a young person’s education level. The unemployment rate for those with a tertiary qualification is 23.2%, those with a matric certificate is 36.5%, and those witout matric is 40.2%. Scarily, those without matric account for 56% of unemployed young people. With the youth NEET rate increasing annually, there cannot be a more important time for Trailblazer+.

Trailblazer+ recognises the previously missing ingredient of the need to address learning outcomes – the critical need for the learners to fully engage in these improvements and the important role that peer influence plays. After all, learners are the most affected and must study to realise the education improvements. 

Before COVID, we at enke, had been asking ourselves a few questions: 

• How can we increase the impact that our programs have?, 
• How can we create scalable programs/impact? How do we help inspire more young people to bring about change in their schools and communities, form stronger relationships with schools, parents, and communities we work in?
• What work are we doing in high schools to help prevent young people from becoming NEET post High School? 
• How can we achieve our desired outcomes as cost effectively as possible? 

These questions allowed us to dive deeply into the High School interventions we were running in 2019-2020: the enke: Trailblazer Program and YANDISA (Youth Accelerating National Development in School Advancement). The deep dive resulted in following: 

• We can have a greater impact in young people’s lives, if we focus on delivering one High School program.
• We can not do it alone, we need to build relationships with communities we work in, parents and youth focused community based organizations (which speaks to our scaling model). 
• Our desired change has an element of creating and supporting sustainable projects, not only in school but in the community as well. 
• Clear educational outcomes are important not only for the schools, teachers, learners and parents but for the country as a whole and enke can play a vital role in achieving these. 
• Exposing learners in township and rural area schools to online learning is important.

The Design of enke: Trailblazer+

The results of the deep-dive informed the revamp of Trailblazer and its necessary evolution into Trailblazer Plus (a.k.a “Trailblazer+”), which melds and builds on the best aspects of Trailblazer and YANDiSA. The new enke: Trailblazer+ Program empowers high school students to build power skills while leading school and community projects that tackle social and educational issues that affect their schools and communities. These leaders are activated, trained and supported to design and lead School or Community Action Projects (S/CAPs) that contribute to improve education outcomes, schools and communities. 

Through Trailblazer+, learners have a 9-month experience where they will: 

• Grow an understanding of navigating school leadership and governance.
• Build Power Skills – to thrive, young people need to develop a positive sense of self, set and achieve goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships, and make responsible decisions. These capacities are commonly called social and emotional learning (SEL). At enke, we call them Power Skills.
• Apply data-driven project design and decision-making – learn to gather, analyse and collect information (data) and use it to design projects to make a difference in the lives of fellow learners and community. Learners engage with the DBE Data Driven Dashboard to create relevant and innovative solutions. 
• Improve schools and communities – Learners engage with the School Improvement Plan (SIP) and work with the school leadership team. By designing and running School/Community Action Projects, learners develop practical project skills (e.g. planning, problem solving, resource management, resource mobilization, team management) and power skills (e.g. grit, social awareness, self-efficacy).

Trailblazer+ works with the school leadership system at all levels including the elected Representative Council of Learners (RCL). The program is a leadership development opportunity that enables youth who are voted into the Representative Council of Learners (RCLs) by their peers, to contribute to the achievement of education outcomes. At the same time, they develop skills critical for engagement with civic responsibility and whose attainment. The Trailblazer+ Clubs are an innovation introduced in 2022 to widen student participation and sustain this work in each school. 

Participants will walk away from the Trailblazer+ experience with skills, inspiration and networks that contribute to their future success. The overall goal is to prevent them from becoming NEET or to convert from their NEET status should they fall into it post-school.

The 2022 enke: Trailblazer+ Program Highlights to date (April-September)

From April-September, we’ve made great strides in implementation. Here are some of the highlights so far:

• Successfully recruited and Trained Trailblazer Champions: 14 facilitators trained and selected in April 2022. Participants learned about the Trailblazer+ Program, and the new program model in the week-long training and exposed to how we deliver training at enke. These facilitators are based and reside within the community, schools, where we will be implementing the Trailblazer+ Program. This approach will allow us to provide proper support to the participants and the schools we are working with in this new model.
• Successfully Launched Trailblazer+ (Plus) Program: We launched the first group of the enke: Trailblazer+ Program in June 2022 at Puledi Guest House with a total of 84 participants and 06 teachers attending the training. After the training the participants returned to their schools to start their project implementation, and establish Trailblazer Clubs. Each Trailblazer Club will address issues that will improve the school’s educational outcomes and community. The Trailblazer Club is an extended group of 20+ aspiring leaders who want to bring a positive change in their school and community.
• This first School’s Representative Council of Learners (RCL’s), came from the following 7 schools: Mabel Secondary School, Mphengwa Secondary School, Kgalushi Secondary School, Ntsose Secondary School, Ralekwane Secondary School, Tema Secondary School, Ramatema Secondary School.
• Successfully Formed formal partnerships with 7 schools: We successfully formed relationships with 7 schools from within the targeted areas. As part of our pre-implementation process, the enke team visited the school and conducted a presentation about the new model and possible benefits for the schools and their learners. The school management team and the teacher liaison officers (TLOs) have highlighted that Trailblazer+ was needed in their schools as they don’t have the resources to run such a program effectively. 

2022 is an exciting time for all stakeholders involved, and we look forward to the impact and changes with Trailblazer+. We are excited to see the development of Trailblazer Clubs, the School/Community Action Projects and impact of what will be our biggest class of Trailblazers yet.