The idea for enke: Make Your Mark (“enke”) was formed while three international volunteers - Tom Walsh, Philippa (Pip) Wheaton and Kathryn Maunders - were working in some of the most under-resourced schools in KwaZulu-Natal. The three realised that the young people they were working with were all dissatisfied about the situations in their schools, their communities, their cities, but weren’t being given a chance to make the changes they wanted to see.

Recognizing a need for a space where young people from all backgrounds could come together to develop creative, youth-led solutions, Tom, Pip and Kathryn decided to create one themselves. Thus, in February 2009, the concept of creating a space where youth from across the socioeconomic spectrum could come together  to take their ideas and turn them into action, was born, with the first enke: Forum held in July that year.

At that first enke: Forum, the three co-founders and volunteers discovered that South Africa was missing out on the full potential of its young people, as the high school youth in attendance came up with innovative and inspired solutions to the social issues in their communities. These Forum delegates didn't just have ideas, they went home and started implementing them. Motivated by the delegates, the co-founders decided to that a once-off conference was not going to be enough and, in 2010, enke: Make Your Mark was registered as an organisation and plans were put in place to bring more young people together through this remarkable platform.

The three co-founders have moved on, but the work has continued, evolved and continues to grow. Now, we run holistic programs and provide services to impart the skills and belief systems that enable youth to become effective leaders – people who have the desire and ability to identify and access opportunities for a more positive future.

We do this through:
• Programs for Youth in School
• Programs for Youth Post-School
• Specialised Services

Our strategy is to enable thousands of effective young leaders through our products and services and incubate 3,000 social impact projects by 2020. We aim to do this by expanding and continuing the replication of our model and partnering with others to meet these targets in new markets nationally and regionally

Our research has identified the following gaps:

1. Over 40% of young South Africans are not in employment, education or training. This represents not just a gigantic pool of untapped talent, but also a source of social unrest (c.f. the Arab Spring) and individual despair (McKinsey & Co., 2012 report: Education to Employment).
2. Research by James Heckman (Nobel Prize-winning economist) demonstrates social and emotional competencies are at least as important as technical skills in determining employability, earnings and career success. However, schools and universities focus almost exclusively on academic and technical skills.
3. Social and emotional competencies are also linked to social mobility, impacting (in)equality of opportunity (Blanden, Gregg, Macmillan).
4. Research such as that by Robinson or Mulgan shows youth learn best through real-world experience. Social entrepreneurship is a relevant, effective vehicle for developing skills and experiences that equip young people for success.
5. According to Bobby Godsell, “[o]ur education system (together with mass education systems world-wide) needs to escape from the prism of an industrial society… [T]he generic  competencies needed are a capacity of critical thinking, an ability to communicate well, and attitudes and behaviours that build strong teams.” enke: Make Your Mark develops exactly these competencies.

Through research, we realised that the traditional education system, with its focus on hard, technical skills, is not giving youth the soft (non-cognitive) skills to thrive in life beyond the classroom. This contributes to the rising youth unemployment rate, which is currently sitting at 41%, and the many issues that disproportionately impact youth. This has become a source of social unrest, individual despair and uncertainty for youth. Our focus is to reverse these trends by focusing on building the inherent assets of young people through their participation in social innovation and entrepreneurship.

To tackle the identified skills gap, our development work focuses on the following:

1. Building social capital: both by increasing the breadth & diversity of a participant’s network and, most importantly, by increasing a participant’s ability to recognise value in their existing networks and the confidence to be able to unlock that value;
2. Developing non-cognitive skills: otherwise known as soft skills or social and emotional skills, at enke we are focused on the following skills – resilience, agency, curiosity, gratitude, confidence, surfacing and testing assumptions, reflection for learning (meta-cognition);
3. Increasing social responsibility: At enke we believe young people are an under-tapped resource for addressing the world’s social issues. In particular, youth are uniquely placed to innovate for social change.  We support young people to take action, developing their own ideas. We see them have real impact.  We also see their enke community action projects, that program participants initiate, as a first step in a life-long journey of social responsibility.

enke: Make Your Mark has the following legal registrations in South Africa:

• Non-Profit Company (NPC) registered under with the New Companies Act (formerly Section 21). NPC Registration: 2010/023851/0
• Non-Profit Organisation (NPO) registered with the Department of Social Development under the Non-Profit Organisation Act 1997. NPO Registration: NPO 132-509
• Public Benefit Organisation (PBO) with the South African Revenue Service (SARS). As a registered tax exempt Public Benefit Organisation we are able to issue tax-deductible donation receipts in terms of Section 18A(1)(a) of the Income Tax Act No.58 of 1962. PBO Registration: 9300/37429.