PHASE 3 — APPLY & CONTRIBUTE
Weeks 9–12
Apply everything. Help real people. Leave something useful behind.
Students now move from learning and practice to community application.
They work in teams to support a real local business or micro-entrepreneur.
WEEK 9
Digital Business Tools
Students explore practical digital tools that can help a small business become easier to discover, understand or communicate with.
Depending on the individual business's needs, students may work with:
WhatsApp Business profiles
WhatsApp Catalogues
product photographs and descriptions
Google Business Profiles
customer review strategies
digital menus
simple promotional or communication tools
Importantly, not every business receives the same solution.
Students return to what they learned during Business Discovery and select the tools that genuinely address the problem they identified.
Students create:
A tailored Digital Visibility Package appropriate to the needs of their chosen business
WEEK 10
Running a Community Project
Knowing how to create something is different from knowing how to work responsibly with another person.
Students learn how to:
conduct a clear discovery conversation
agree what they will and will not deliver
define a realistic timeline
communicate progress
explain technology without jargon
respond professionally when something takes longer than expected
manage feedback and expectations
They also consider what to do if someone asks them to create something misleading or factually inaccurate.
Students create:
Community Project Plan — agreed scope, timeline and communication approach
WEEK 11
Delivery Week
This is where the pieces come together.
Student teams produce the solution agreed with their community business.
Depending on the need, this could include a combination of:
branding • posters • social content • video • WhatsApp tools • digital catalogue • business profile • customer communication
Before anything is delivered, students conduct an internal quality check.
Then they meet the business owner, explain what they have created, demonstrate how it can be used and ask two deliberately simple questions:
“Was this helpful?”
“Is there anything we should change?”
Students revise where necessary and document what was delivered through photographs, screenshots and feedback.
Students deliver:
A complete, quality-checked Community Business Package
WEEK 12
Demo Day & Handover
The GenRise journey ends where it began: with a real problem.
But now students can show what they did about it.
Each team presents:
What problem did we identify?
What did we build?
Why did we choose that solution?
Who did it help?
What feedback did we receive?
What did we learn?
Students present to school leadership, teachers, families, community members and participating business owners, using real evidence wherever possible — a catalogue on a phone, a poster displayed in a shop, a completed video or an active business profile.
But Demo Day is also about what comes next.
The cohort contributes its best processes, prompts and lessons to the GenRise Program Playbook, creating a resource for the students who follow.
Each founding student also leaves advice for the next cohort:
“What I wish I had known when I started.”
Students leave behind:
Demo Day presentations + GenRise Program Playbook + advice for the next cohort
THE GENRISE REFLECTION JOURNEY
Running alongside all 12 weeks is another journey — one that isn't measured by how many posters or videos a student creates.
At the end of each session, students reflect briefly:
WHAT DID I LEARN?
What can I understand or do today that I couldn't before?
WHAT CHALLENGED ME?
What was difficult, unexpected or didn't work?
WHAT WILL I DO DIFFERENTLY?
How will I use what I learned next time?
Over 12 weeks, these reflections create a record of each student's development — not simply in digital ability, but in judgement, communication, resilience, confidence and self-belief.
