Why We Want Youth Building Ventures

Everything Collably does points at one outcome: young people building ventures. Not attending our trainings, not collecting certificates, not even getting hired, though all of those may happen along the way. Building. This post explains why that's the target, because it's a deliberate choice, and it comes from a few beliefs we hold strongly.

We don't believe employment is the only way to make a living

Somewhere along the way, we all absorbed the same script: study hard, graduate, get employed. Employment became not just one path but the definition of success itself, the only respectable answer to "what will you do after school?"

We believe otherwise. Not because employment is bad, a good job is a good thing, but because treating it as the only way has quietly become dangerous. We covered the arithmetic in our post on unemployment: the formal market absorbs only a fraction of graduates, and the queue grows every year. When an entire generation is raised to pursue one narrow door, most of them end up standing outside it.

And here's what we refuse to accept as the alternative: that if the door doesn't open, you settle for survival work that uses nothing you learned. That your education becomes something you once did instead of something you use.

There is a third option, older than any job market: make a living by creating something valuable. That's what a venture is.

A venture is anything valuable you build

When people hear "venture," they picture a tech startup chasing millions. That's one kind, and a fine one. But it's not what we mean, or not all of what we mean.

To us, a venture is anything you build that creates real value for real people. A startup. A small business, done right, with proper systems . A tech product. A farm run like an enterprise instead of a fallback. Even another organization like this one, tackling unsolved problems. If people's lives are better because the thing you built exists, it counts.

This matters because different builders are built for different things. Some of you are engineers, some are organizers, some are sellers, some are teachers. A country doesn't just need startups. It needs every kind of builder, building every kind of thing.

Education is meant to be applied

Ask yourself an uncomfortable question: what is all this education for?

Mwalimu Julius Nyerere answered it a long time ago:

""Education is not a way to escape poverty, it is a way of fighting it.""

(— Julius .K. Nyerere, Founding Father of Tanzania)

Notice the distinction he's making. Escaping is passive: you hold your certificate and hope it lifts you somewhere better. Fighting is active: you take what you know and use it as a weapon against the problem itself. Nyerere understood that education sitting unused is not power at all. It only becomes power the moment it's applied.

Yet look at how we treat education today. For too many students, the honest answer to "what is it for?" has become "to qualify for a job that may never come." A degree that's never applied is like strength never used, and watching thousands of educated young people spend their most capable years doing work that requires none of their education is, to us, the quietest tragedy in the country. It's education used to escape, and failing even at that.

Building is education used to fight. The moment you start a venture, everything you know becomes useful. Your coursework, your side interests, the things you taught yourself, they all suddenly have somewhere to go. Builders don't ask whether their education was worth it. They're too busy using it.

Builders are how the whole problem gets solved

So far, everything has been about you, the individual. But there's a bigger reason we want as many young builders as possible, and it's in our vision statement.

Unemployment is not solved by preparing more people for jobs. It's solved by more people creating jobs.Every venture that survives needs hands: teammates, suppliers, sellers, and eventually employees. The graduate queue we wrote about doesn't shrink because people study harder. It shrinks when enough of the people in it walk out and build the places others will work.

That's the Tanzania we're after: not one where every young person is an entrepreneur, but one with so many builders that education finally leads somewhere. Where leaving school with a running venture is normal, and where even those who choose employment are choosing among jobs that builders before them created.

And if you build and fail?

We have to be honest here, because this belief only works with the whole truth attached: most ventures fail. Yours probably will too, at least the first one. Maybe the second and third.

We don't say that to discourage you. We say it because it's exactly why we want you building now, as a student, while failure is cheap and time is on your side. We've said it before and we'll keep saying it: the best time to try, fail, and try again is before graduation.

And a failed venture, built honestly, still pays you. Skills sharpened under real pressure. A portfolio of real work. Teammates who've seen what you can do. Lessons no classroom sells at any price. Every builder who eventually succeeds is standing on a pile of their own failed attempts. The only people who get nothing are the ones who never build at all.

The invitation

So that's why we want youth building ventures. Because employment can't carry everyone. Because education deserves to be used. Because value creation is the most honest way to make a living. And because the country's way out of the queue is through its builders.

You don't need permission to start, and you don't need to feel ready. Nobody ever does. You need a skill, a few people worth building with, and the willingness to try something that might not work.

That's exactly what Collably is here to give you.

"Unemployment is not solved by preparing more people for jobs. It's solved by more people creating jobs."

(CEO, collably)