Reznick Communications is proud to have delivered the brand identity for Vijana2Thrive (V2T), a youth-focused programme supported by the Mastercard Foundation and implemented in Kenya through a consortium led by Swahilipot Hub Foundation, in partnership with the National Council of Churches of Kenya (NCCK) and the E4Impact Foundation.
The brand identity was developed to provide the programme with a distinctive and coherent visual presence capable of communicating its purpose across a wide range of audiences — from young people and entrepreneurs to employers, mentors, investors, community organizations, government stakeholders and development partners.
At the heart of Vijana2Thrive is a straightforward but significant ambition: to expand pathways for young people in Kenya to access dignified and fulfilling work, while placing young women at the centre of the programme’s inclusion agenda.
The programme is designed to reach 42,900 opportunity youth and create pathways to dignified and fulfilling employment for 30,000 young people, with a commitment that at least 80% of participants will be young women.
Building a Brand Around Opportunity
Vijana2Thrive operates in a context where young people possess talent, ambition and entrepreneurial potential, but may face significant barriers when trying to translate that potential into sustainable livelihoods.
The programme’s work spans Mombasa, Kilifi, Nairobi and Kitui counties, connecting young people with skills development, entrepreneurship support, mentorship, employment opportunities and other pathways into economic participation.
For a programme operating across multiple counties and engaging different groups of stakeholders, a strong and consistent brand identity is an important communications tool.
Reznick Communications approached the assignment with the understanding that Vijana2Thrive needed a visual identity capable of representing youth, opportunity, inclusion, ambition, growth and forward movement, while remaining practical enough to work across the programme’s many touchpoints.
The identity therefore serves not simply as a visual signature, but as a communications foundation for a programme designed to connect young people with opportunities and support them as they move towards work and entrepreneurship.
Translating a Complex Programme Into a Clear Brand
One of the defining characteristics of Vijana2Thrive is the breadth of its interventions.
The programme is not limited to a single employment pathway. Its activities include entrepreneurship development, employability and workforce-readiness training, mentorship, business development, job placement, post-placement support and connections to investment and enterprise opportunities.
This creates an important branding challenge: the identity needs to be sufficiently flexible to represent different experiences while maintaining one recognizable programme.
For Reznick Communications, this meant approaching the brand as a system rather than as an isolated visual asset.
The resulting identity provides a foundation through which programme communications can maintain consistency while speaking to different audiences and activities.
From youth recruitment and community engagement to mentorship, entrepreneurship, employment and stakeholder communications, the brand gives Vijana2Thrive a unified visual language through which its different programme components can be recognized as part of one larger initiative.
Designed for Young People and the Opportunity Ecosystem
The programme’s focus on opportunity youth places young people at the centre of its communications.
Vijana2Thrive seeks to create practical pathways into dignified and fulfilling employment, while addressing barriers that can prevent young people – particularly young women – from fully participating in the economy.
The programme’s communications consequently need to speak in a way that is accessible, energetic and relevant to young audiences, while also maintaining the credibility expected by employers, development partners, investors, institutions and other stakeholders.
This dual audience was an important consideration in developing a brand identity for the programme.
The identity needed to have enough energy and contemporary relevance to resonate with young people, while remaining professional enough to operate within a major development programme supported by the Mastercard Foundation and implemented by established Kenyan and international organizations.
A Programme Built Around Skills, Mentorship and Access
Vijana2Thrive’s approach recognizes that access to employment is influenced by more than the availability of jobs.
The programme is supporting young people through practical skills development and workforce-readiness initiatives. Recent programme activities have included training covering areas such as communication, teamwork, time management, problem-solving, adaptability and workplace expectations.
Entrepreneurship is another significant component.
In Kilifi and other participating counties, young people have been engaged in training around business ideation, business planning, financial management, record keeping, marketing and customer relationships.
The programme has also introduced Pitching Thursday sessions, providing young entrepreneurs with opportunities to present their business ideas, receive feedback and connect with mentors and potential sources of support.
In some communities, these activities have deliberately been taken beyond conventional urban centres and into grassroots locations, reflecting the programme’s emphasis on widening access to opportunity.
Mentorship is another important element of the model. NCCK has, for example, recruited professional mentors to support young people in Nairobi and Kitui through structured sessions focused on career development and practical industry knowledge.
These different activities all contribute to the central idea behind the programme: creating pathways through which young people can develop skills, build confidence, access networks and move towards sustainable livelihoods.
Putting Young Women at the Centre
A defining feature of Vijana2Thrive is its deliberate focus on young women.
The programme has set a target for at least 80% of its participants to be young women, explicitly responding to systemic gender inequalities that can limit women’s economic participation.
This commitment gives the programme’s brand identity an important communications responsibility.
The visual identity needs to support a programme narrative that is inclusive and aspirational without reducing young women to a single category or portraying them only as beneficiaries.
Instead, the programme’s communications can position young women as entrepreneurs, professionals, innovators, leaders, creators and economic participants.
Stories emerging from the programme already illustrate this approach.
For example, programme communications have highlighted participants such as Patricia Ngaira, whose mentorship experience helped build her confidence as she pursued a tailoring apprenticeship, and Emmaculate Mbithe, whose experience has included community mobilization, entrepreneurship and leadership.
These stories demonstrate the breadth of what a programme such as Vijana2Thrive is seeking to enable: not simply participation in a training programme, but greater confidence, economic agency and access to opportunities.
Connecting Youth to the World of Work
The programme also recognizes that training alone does not necessarily translate into sustainable employment.
Vijana2Thrive has therefore incorporated pathways connecting trained and work-ready young people to employers and employment opportunities.
Programme partners have been involved in job matching, placement and post-placement support. Current programme activity includes efforts to support young people after they enter the workplace, including engagement with employers and employees to strengthen workplace integration and address emerging challenges.
This creates a broader employment ecosystem around the young person — from preparation and training, through recruitment and placement, to continued workplace support.
It is an approach that aligns closely with the Mastercard Foundation’s broader focus on enabling young people in Africa to access meaningful, dignified and fulfilling work. The Foundation has set a goal of enabling 30 million young people across Africa to access dignified and fulfilling work by 2030, with particular attention to young women, refugees and displaced people, and people with disabilities.
Creating Space for Entrepreneurship
For young people pursuing entrepreneurship, Vijana2Thrive provides another pathway.
Through entrepreneurship training, mentorship, pitching opportunities and the programme’s Challenge Fund activities, participants are being supported to develop and strengthen enterprises.
Recent programme activities have included Deals Den, where young entrepreneurs presented their ventures to investors, mentors, judges and ecosystem partners. Ventures represented sectors including fashion and accessories, beauty and personal care, manufacturing and fabrication, handicrafts and IT.
The programme has also taken its entrepreneurship activities into grassroots communities through Pitching Thursday Mashinani sessions, allowing aspiring entrepreneurs to receive feedback and connect with mentors and other innovators closer to where they live.
This combination of employment and entrepreneurship pathways is an important characteristic of Vijana2Thrive and reinforces the need for a brand identity that can operate across a diverse programme ecosystem.
A Brand Identity for a Multi-Partner Programme
Vijana2Thrive brings together multiple organizations with different areas of expertise.
The programme is led by Swahilipot Hub Foundation, with NCCK and E4Impact Foundation as consortium partners, and is supported by the Mastercard Foundation.
Each organization brings a different institutional perspective and role to the programme.
A coherent programme identity therefore helps establish Vijana2Thrive as a recognizable initiative in its own right while existing within the wider ecosystem of its implementing and supporting partners.
For communications, this consistency becomes particularly important when the programme is represented at community events, training sessions, mentorship activities, entrepreneurship forums, employment engagements and stakeholder meetings across different counties.
A recognizable identity helps audiences immediately connect these activities to the broader Vijana2Thrive programme.
Reznick Communications’ Approach to Brand Development
At Reznick Communications, we view brand identity as more than the creation of a logo.
A strong identity provides an organization or programme with a consistent visual and communications foundation from which it can tell its story, engage audiences and build recognition over time.
For Vijana2Thrive, this meant developing an identity around the programme’s central themes of opportunity, youth, inclusion, growth, skills, enterprise and meaningful work.
The brand needed to function across a programme with multiple audiences, multiple counties and multiple interventions.
It also needed to be sufficiently adaptable for use across digital communications, programme materials, events, community engagement and stakeholder communications.
The result is a brand identity designed to give Vijana2Thrive a recognizable presence as it continues its work with young people across Kenya.
Supporting a Growing National Conversation on Youth Opportunity
The Vijana2Thrive programme is being implemented at a time when questions around youth employment, skills development, entrepreneurship and access to economic opportunity remain central to Kenya’s development conversation.
The Mastercard Foundation’s broader work emphasizes the importance of inclusive pathways to dignified and fulfilling work, while Vijana2Thrive brings that focus into a programme designed around the realities and aspirations of young people in participating Kenyan counties.
Its community-centred approach, combined with skills development, mentorship, entrepreneurship and employment pathways, creates multiple entry points for young people with different aspirations and circumstances.
The brand identity provides the programme with a visual platform through which those stories can be communicated consistently.
Reznick Communications and Purpose-Driven Branding
The Vijana2Thrive project represents the kind of communications challenge that sits at the intersection of strategy, design and social impact.
A programme can have ambitious objectives, strong implementation partners and significant resources, but its audiences still need to understand what it is, who it serves and how they can engage with it.
Effective brand identity helps bridge that gap.
For Reznick Communications, the Vijana2Thrive engagement demonstrates our commitment to developing communications and brand solutions for organizations and programmes working to create measurable social and economic impact.
We are proud to have contributed to the visual identity of a programme focused on expanding opportunities for young people and supporting pathways towards dignified and fulfilling work.
As Vijana2Thrive continues its implementation across Mombasa, Kilifi, Nairobi and Kitui, its identity will provide a consistent platform through which the programme can engage young people, employers, mentors, entrepreneurs, partners and communities.
About Vijana2Thrive
Vijana2Thrive (V2T) is a Mastercard Foundation-supported programme in Kenya implemented through a consortium led by Swahilipot Hub Foundation, together with the National Council of Churches of Kenya and E4Impact Foundation.
The programme aims to reach 42,900 opportunity youth and create pathways to dignified and fulfilling employment for 30,000 young people, with at least 80% of participants being young women. Its activities include entrepreneurship development, employability and workforce-readiness training, mentorship, employment placement, post-placement support and enterprise development across participating counties.
About Reznick Communications
Reznick Communications is a communications and digital agency providing strategic communications, branding, digital experiences and creative solutions for organizations seeking to strengthen their visibility, engagement and impact.
Through strategic thinking, creative execution and digital expertise, Reznick Communications helps organizations translate their ideas, programmes and missions into compelling brands and communications experiences.
Project: Vijana2Thrive Programme Brand Identity
Client/Programme: Vijana2Thrive (V2T)
Strategic Partner: Mastercard Foundation
Implementing Consortium: Swahilipot Hub Foundation, National Council of Churches of Kenya (NCCK) and E4Impact Foundation
Geographic Focus: Mombasa, Kilifi, Nairobi and Kitui, Kenya
Brand Identity: Reznick Communications
