Youth and Starting Business from Scratch: A Practical Application of Design Thinking to Launch a Business

Hello, my name is Vicent Nemeyimana. I am a nurse and public health professional, a researcher, and an award-winning sustainability entrepreneur.

NB: This course is tailored for non-health youth and others interested in innovations and entrepreneurship. Videos remains the same, but the text is customized where necessary. The first version of the course was meant for youth in healthcare (nurses, midwives, doctors, pharmacists, and all allied health professionals).

In short, I currently wear three hats:

1. I work as a nurse at Mulago National Referral Hospital.

2. I serve part-time as a tutor and lecturer at Jeph International University (formerly,Indian Institute of Health and Allied Sciences).

3. I pursue innovations and entrepreneurship through Miklah Life, a social enterprise I formally founded in 2019.

As you can see, everything I will teach you in this course is based on experience. If I haven’t tried it myself, I won’t advise it. So, you can trust me.

Just like you, I never imagined I would become an entrepreneur, nor did I think of approaching life as an innovator and businessman.

However, as I progressed in my nursing and public health career, I felt that I was not fully utilizing my knowledge, skills, and experiences. There was a vacuum, a sense of unfulfillment, and I often felt that I could do more.

Importantly, I was also financially struggling – still not wealthy, but certainly better than I was! Innovation and entrepreneurship became a way to escape poverty and other limitations and create an alternative source of income.

As already stated, I am not wealthy yet, but I truly know I am better than I was before joining entrepreneurship. In other words, two things motivated me to join entrepreneurship:

1. The search for fulfillment, for the opportunity to do and be more, enlarge my impact across many more people.

2. The search for additional income, for the financial struggle is real.

I suspect this is true for many of you: we are all limited not by our potential, but by the philosophies of our training and the environment around us. Otherwise, we could do much more. We could actually add more income to what we are currently earning.

In fact, having an additional source of income is not just a by-the-way – it is a priority. And, honestly, it should be one of your first reasons for innovating anything or becoming an entrepreneur.

Looking back, I started exploring my creativity and potential as far back as secondary school:

• I sang and recorded songs as early as high school times (some of which are on My YouTube Channel).

• I wrote my first book while still in high school. See all my books here.

• I started familiarizing myself with computers as soon as I could, also during high school at Mutolere Secondary School.

• I launched my first blog (or website) in 2014, shortly after arriving in Kampala.

Fast forward: these creative activities grew into something more formal in 2019, and Miklah Life was born, exactly after I won the Total Startupper of the Year award. I will share more stories about this journey later during the course.

The key point here is simple: I was once just like you—unsure where innovation and entrepreneurship would fit in my life, especially the life of a nurse or public health professional or health worker.

But today, entrepreneurship has truly changed my life, given me purpose, and complements my work as a nurse and public health professional.

This course is specially designed for youth aged 18–40, whether you are in school, early career, or exploring new opportunities. It will help you:

• Identify opportunities in everyday life, community, or work, and turn real problems into innovative business ideas.

• Transform a raw idea into a testable, actionable business concept using Design Thinking, even with no prior experience or money.

• Build and validate a business idea quickly, creating solutions that people want and are willing to support or pay for.

• Craft a strong value proposition and a simple, practical business model.

• Walk away with a ready-to-launch business idea, fully structured and actionable.

Are you ready to start and launch an innovative business? Let’s jump in!