Foundation
About Springboard
Roadshow Foundation
Springboard Road Show Foundation is a not-for-profit organization incorporated under the laws of Ghana in 2011. Springboard is co-founded by Albert Ocran and Comfort Ocran, who have over two decades of experience in the youth development space.
The Foundation operates from Accra-Ghana and delivers its various interventions across Ghana. In 2011, in addition to traveling across all regions of Ghana, Springboard’s flagship annual Road Show visited Nigeria and Gambia.
Springboard’s Vision
Empowering the next generation of African leaders and entrepreneurs.
Springboard’s Mission
To continually empower generations of young Africans committed to professional excellence and the holistic development of their innate potential. To achieve these through integrated entrepreneurial programmes, media education, mentoring clubs and diverse empowerment interventions across Ghana and beyond.
Springboard’s Values:
Humility, Exemplary Leadership and Discipline (HELD)
Track Record
With fifteen years of experience in youth mobilisation, engagement and mentoring, the Springboard Road Show Foundation is Ghana’s leading promoter of youth entrepreneurship, talent development and investment among tertiary students, graduates, young executives, and formal and informal youth groups nationwide.
The Foundation has over the years documented stories of young people who have been mentored into entrepreneurship and have gone on to build thriving businesses. The nationwide Springboard Road Show has over 300,000 alumni.
In 2020, the experience gained in this field was recognised when Mastercard Foundation partnered with Springboard for the COVID-19 Recovery and Resilience (CoRe) Programme. The CoRe Programme ended up reaching and empowering an estimated twenty-three million young people using technologically driven solutions like e-Learning, e-Mentoring, and e-Counselling. A notable outcome of the CoRe Programme was a publication of 200 success stories about young people bouncing back from COVID-19, many of which are entrepreneurial in orientation.
Springboard engages youth from the grassroots level with a multi-layered mentoring approach. Our bootcamp for teenagers, TEENPreneurship, targets youth between 12-17 years. Our nationwide Roadshow targets secondary and tertiary students and young professionals largely between the ages of 18-35 years. Our continuous education initiatives (Publications, Radio, TV and Online shows) offer programming that cuts across all youth demographics. We also offer specialized mentoring for young ladies under our Ladies Empowerment and Advocacy Development (LEAD) initiative. At Springboard, we believe no youth must be left behind.
Springboard has built long-lasting partnerships with corporate sponsors like MTN, the Enterprise Group and UMB Bank, among others. Many of our alumni from the earlier years now volunteer as mentors on Road Shows. We work with the most notable CEOs and leaders across Ghana on our interventions.
1n 2021, Springboard partnered with the Ministry of Finance (MOF) to host a series of Springboard Youth Dialogues where the youth directly engaged with Finance Minister, Hon. Ken Ofori-Atta, on issues ranging from youth unemployment to empowering entrepreneurship.
These dialogues have, to an extent, influenced the development of policies on youth entrepreneurship and the creation of an enabling environment for young entrepreneurs. Significantly, Ghana’s 2022 Budget Statement, themed ‘Building a Sustainable Entrepreneurial State,’ indicated a strong focus on youth.
By continually collaborating with government, multinational donor agencies, corporate Ghana, business leaders, interest groups, and of course, the youth themselves, Springboard’s vision of a Ghana and Africa with by a new generation of young innovators, entrepreneurs and ethical leaders can only grow stronger.
THE VISION CUSTODIANS
Albert & Comfort Ocran
Albert & Comfort Ocran are executive coaches with an extensive list of clients traversing the mining, insurance, petrochemical, telecommunications, manufacturing, automobile, education, finance and banking industries, among others.
They are both fellows of the Africa Leadership Initiative and the prestigious Aspen Global Leaders Network based in Colorado, USA. The couple hosts Springboard, your Virtual University on Joy FM in Accra and the Springboard Zone series of broadcasts on diverse media platforms.
They have co-authored 26 bestselling books including “The Lord, Madiba & The Eagle.”
Albert & Comfort are promoters of the Festival of Ideas, the flagship business conference of the firm. They travel across Ghana every year with the Springboard Road Show, an annual personal development conference that has since 2007 mentored over 200,000 emerging leaders and millions of online participants.
Going Forward
Over the next five years, Springboard is poised to scale up on the progress made to implement a series of collaborative partnership projects concurrently in its core areas of expertise, namely, entrepreneurship promotion, job creation and financial literacy. These high impact initiatives, with the potential to affect millions of young people, are at various stages of conceptualization and development.
As part of its continuing efforts at institutional capacity building, the Foundation has recently reconstituted its five-member board with competencies in governance, audit, fundraising, communication, information technology, gender and inclusion, youth development and human resource.
In the medium term. Springboard expects to leverage on the successful implementation of various projects in Ghana to extend its services into other African countries.
