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Leonard Ncube in Victoria Falls
DYNAMITE comes in small packages. This old adage best describes Ms Nomqhele Samantha Siziba, a 30-year-old woman who has helped transform livelihoods by capacitating communities through financial inclusion, civic education and entrepreneurship skills.

Ms Siziba is the founder of Youth Invest Trust, an organisation that seeks to capacitate youths and young women with lifelong skills.

She founded Youth Invest in 2017 at the age of 26, taking heed of Government’s call for youths to start their own ventures and become employers instead of employment seekers.

Ms Siziba said she owes her success to her father, Mr Nicholas Njobo Siziba, a former lecturer at Hillside Teachers’ College in Bulawayo, who raised her and her elder sister as a single parent following the death of their mother. Ms Siziba was five years old when her mother died.

“My father has been supportive and he inspired us to dream big and to look beyond the present as he taught us that we can be anything that we wanted.

“I started Youth Invest in 2017 after realising that most organisations were not focusing on both civic participation and entrepreneurship,” said Ms Siziba. She said she wants to close the gap. Ms Siziba also said people were not empowered to confidently and actively participate in business and civic activities beneficial to their communities. Youth Invest co-ordinated financial inclusion programmes in Luveve, Emakhandeni and Bellevue suburbs in Bulawayo where more than 1 200 people have been capacitated.

The same programmes have been introduced in Victoria Falls’ Chidobe, Ndlovu, Chewumba and Jambezi areas where more than 1 500 have benefited. Ms Siziba has helped establish Siyazenzela Crafts and Village Tours, a grouping of young women and youth who have received training and are now able to sell products directly to tourists without the help of middlemen.

She has also established Thuthukani Women’s Support Group in Chidobe, Sikhona Women’s Action Group in Chewumba and Nyamukani in Jambezi. In Victoria Falls, Youth Invest is undertaking a programme focusing on cross border cooperation between informal traders in Victoria Falls and Livingstone in Zambia.

Through the programme, the Trust helps cross border traders in lobbying and engaging local authorities and border authorities on different issues such as by-laws, border passes, sexual harassment and gender-based violence which are the most common challenges faced by informal traders at ports of entry.

Youth Invest has established the Zambezi Informal Cross Border Traders Association to capacitate women’s action groups to engage political leaders and authorities on policy issues and also train them in business leadership.

“Our idea was to mobilise young people to participate in civic activities and register to vote so that they actively participate in economic development in their communities. We take different financial institutions to communities to educate people on services and products they offer and one of the major issues that came out of those campaigns is the issue of collateral which youths said they did not have,” she said.

Youth Empower Bank relaxed some requirements and removed proof of residence and collateral requirement as a result of the engagements.

“Our model is such that every individual has to become self-reliant afterwards. We have assisted 2 700 people who are now financially stable in Bulawayo and Victoria Falls,” she said.

Ms Siziba said despite losing a mother at a tender age, she had a pleasant childhood as she grew up surrounded and supported by a supportive family comprising maternal and paternal aunts. Her father remarried when she and her elder sister finished high school.

Born in Bulawayo in a family of two girls, Ms Siziba attended Matshayisikhova Primary before going to Mtshabezi High for her secondary education.

She did Bachelor of Social Science majoring in Criminology and Psychology with Monash University and Bachelor of Arts Honours in Applied Psychology for Professional Contexts with the University of South Africa (Unisa). She said she quit two jobs in quick succession because she was determined to start Youth Invest as she wanted a bigger challenge in life.

Ms Siziba said she got inspiration from kindergarten songs — “Masidonse kanye kanye sijabule, umsebenzi wami ngowethu sonke” and “Lesi isibane sami esincane ngizasenza sikhanye” which encourage her to work with community.

“If you look at our logo, it’s a honeycomb which is closely knit together to be able to store all the honey. This resembles unity in a society and means that if each one of us were to play our part effectively, we would close many gaps in our communities and the country and make Zimbabwe what it should be. Life is a game of self-belief and if we don’t believe in ourselves as a country, no investors will believe in us,” she said.

Ms Siziba said community groups and individuals that have been trained by Youth Invest have become a launch pad for civic participation, advancement of women’s rights and advocacy for cross border participation. To her, this is a way of giving back to the community.

She said youth mostly struggle to mobilise resources and open bank accounts when they seek to start their own business as financial institutions are reluctant to assist them. Ms Siziba commended Government for coming up with various programmes targeted at youth and women.