Unpacking the motivators of young minds
· 5 min read · HazeYouth team
Before you can support a young person, you have to understand what actually moves them. It is rarely what adults assume.
Ask a room of young people in Kampala what drives them and you will not hear a single answer. You will hear rent. You will hear a parent's health. You will hear a beat that has been stuck in someone's head for three weeks. Motivation is not one thing, and treating it as one thing is the fastest way to design a programme nobody attends.
In our peer circles we start with a simple exercise: name the thing you would do this week if money and permission were not a problem. The answers are specific and practical — record a demo, finish a certificate, apologise to a sibling, get tested. Specific is good. Specific can be supported.
What we consistently see is that young people are not short of ambition; they are short of a safe place to say the ambition out loud without being laughed at. That is the actual gap. Our job is less about motivating and more about removing the cost of being sincere.
So we hold the space, we keep it confidential, and we follow up. Two weeks later we ask about the specific thing. That follow-up — unglamorous, undramatic — is where change tends to start.