About Us
Founded by practitioners who saw the same challenge from both sides: talented young Africans struggling to access meaningful work, and impact organisations struggling to find and develop the right talent.
We built Sparks to bring the two together.
About the Fellowship
Talented young people are no longer just looking for work; they want to be working on the things that matter to them, with people that inspire them, while creating meaningful change in the world. How do we know this? We work with them, we have trained them, and we are them. The world of wicked problems we live in today needs sense makers, not just skills. It needs young talent with energy, insight, and focus.
We call them ‘Sparks’.
There is a systemic need for Impact Organisations (IOs) to build their capacity for executing on their work, but they lack the resources for recruiting, training, and managing young talent. The Sparks Impact Fellowship solves this problem by teaching and equipping a new generation of impact leaders to conduct critical impact work now and into the future. We do this by recruiting high potential young graduates and placing them at IOs for a period agreed with each host organisation, while equipping them with core impact skills and supporting their professional development.
Where You Come In
Impact Organisations
Access high-potential African talent with structured development and ongoing support built into the placement.
African Graduates
Apply to become a Spark and build the skills, experience and relationships to grow your career in impact.
Funders & Partners
Back Sparks to expand access, strengthen the impact talent pipeline and grow a financially sustainable model.
Our Values
We drive positive and sustainable impact in our communities with enthusiasm and energy.
We do the right thing, always. We enact respect and trustworthiness.
We treat others with empathy and humility, fostering collaboration within our community.
We commit to excellence, encouraging a culture of continuous learning and development.
We love feedback, own our commitments and follow through.
We push boundaries by solving problems with creativity and out-of-the-box thinking.
We celebrate the wins, laugh through the hard days, and bring lightness to the work of change.
About the Team
Janine Rutsch
Co-founder & CEO (She/Her)
Janine is a Chartered Accountant with an MCom in Development Finance from the UCT Graduate School of Business. Her own journey from traditional finance into the impact sector exposed many of the barriers Sparks now works to address. She went on to work across impact finance and social innovation, including with Roots of Impact, and won the University of Oxford's global Map the System competition in 2022. Her experience spans many of the disciplines Sparks develops in its Fellows, from systems thinking and finance to strategic problem-solving. At Sparks, Janine leads the organisation and its development as a financially sustainable social enterprise.
Rowan Spazzoli
Co-founder & Chief Strategy Officer (He/Him)
Rowan is a social entrepreneur, educator and network-builder with an MCom in Economic Development and more than a decade spent connecting young people, entrepreneurs, universities and impact organisations. As co-founder of Phaphama SEDI, an adjunct lecturer at the University of Cape Town and Community Lead at Yunus Social Innovation, he has built and supported communities across the impact sector in Africa and internationally. Sparks formalises much of the work he has long done informally: spotting promising people, connecting them to opportunities, building their capabilities and helping relationships across the sector take root. At Sparks, he leads strategy, partnerships and the development of its impact talent network.
Entrepreneur, activist, and social innovator with six years' experience leading marketing, talent acquisition, and change management. Founder of Grab A Grad, for training and placing graduates in tech.
Spark 2025 alum placed with Relativ Impact, and is now driving system development, measuring the Sparks' impact, and bringing her creative flair to the programme she came up through.
Bringing 20+ years in bookkeeping and accounts management, Debs supports philanthropic organisations including the Thandulwazi Maths and Science Academy and Tariro in Zimbabwe.
Spark 2025 alum and communications specialist driving how the Sparks story reaches the world, bringing sharp brand instincts to the programme's marketing and outreach.
Let's Get Acquainted
Tell us a little about yourself and what you're looking for, and we'll be in touch.