Faizat Funmilola Salawu is a humanitarian and a final-year law student of the Obafemi Awolowo University, who is enthusiastic about environmental, telecommunication, intellectual property law. She is also the coordinator of the Reaching Minds Foundation, where she is the project lead of the foundation for its Tekisite project. In this interview with KINGSLEY ALUMONA, she speaks about why she decided to study law, her humanitarian work, her advice for the government on children’s education, among others.
WHAT is the story behind you wanting to become a lawyer?
Law is so diverse and it affects every aspect of our lives, almost without us noticing, and this fascinates me deeply. It’s so integral to the society. That it needs to be studied in order to achieve a deep understanding of how societies work.
Furthermore, as an environmental law enthusiast, I appreciate how my career choice can help me contribute to efforts targeted at maintaining a balance between humanity and nature. This is because, to keep the world intact, we need to legally conserve it for the future.
You are into the humanitarian space. What inspired this aspect of your life/work?
You don’t have to wear a cape before you become a hero. You can be the hero of your inner world. We all want to take care of the people in our lives, those sitting at our table. But I believe we can have a world where people are building a large table rather than a higher fence.
You shouldn’t say you’re smiling, if you smile alone. To be honest, if we all don’t go ahead, if we’re not all happy, it’s not progress, there’s no happiness. I don’t want the sun to brighten just my yard — I want a picture that has us all in it. So, my goal is to at least make life beautiful enough for people, the way it is for me.
You have an engagement as the coordinator of the Reaching Minds Foundation. Tell us about the foundation and its core focus areas.
The Reaching Minds Foundation is a non-governmental organisation, and our mission is to make Nigeria and the world better. We’re particular about the girl-child, Formal and informal education of children, especially those on the streets, curbing cybercrime, menstrual heath, internally displaced people, and female inmates.
We’ve embarked on various projects such as Tekisite, Pad a Girl-child, the End Period Poverty campaign, which aim was to provide sanitary products for women and also empower them by teaching them how to make reusable pads. It was a successful project, as it had in attendance a total of over 700 women at the various locations it was held, the IDP camp in Borije, Lagos, Makoko slum also in Lagos, and finally Modakeke, Osun State.
Our vision is to empower the vulnerable, build a better and safer community by reaching out to a soul at a time.
Your profile says you are the project lead of the foundation for its Tekisite project. What is Tekisite about?
The Tekisite academy is a leading high-caliber digital skills empowerment academy, targeted at eradicating cyber crime and social vices in the society by training teenagers in digital skills like software development, game development, graphic designing, UI/UX designing, and digital marketing.
The academy operates as a boot camp, where we train students on selected digital skills and thereafter, attach them to mentors, who takeout time to help them further develop theses kills.
Our goal with the academy is to eradicate cybercrime. To do this, we plan to eventually have a hub where homeless children and children without access to both formal and informal education can build a life buy registering to be trained on different digital skills with no fee attached.
What recent project did Tekisite undertake and how did it benefit the participants?
We had the first edition of the project at Ayetoro in Ogun States in July 2021, and the second edition at Saki, Oyo State in April 2022, where we trained over 500 students. The boot camps ran for two weeks, after which we had students showcase what they have been taught, and an exceptional student in particular showcased a website he created for his school. The students were left with a burning desire to further equip themselves with the skills needed to thrive in the world of ICT, with access to the various people who taught them these skills as mentors.
Digital literacy is one of the main focuses of Tekisite, but it requires a lot of money and resources to train young people in this area. How do you manage the challenges?
Achieving our aim to equip children and ensure they have access to opportunities for digital literacy has not been a walk in the park, as we have been faced with various challenges, the major one being access to funds. We run a huge budget academy. However, due to the economy and unavailability of sponsors, we have not had an easy journey. We have had to rely on membership contributions and taking money from our personal pockets to achieve our aims.
We have a plethora of competent tutors as volunteers. So, availability of mentors and tutors for the children has not been a problem. However, there is a limit to what we can do without the ‘wheel of our evangelism’ money.
How would you advise the government on the prioritisation of children’s education, digital literacy, and social wellbeing?
First, we have moved beyond telling them this is why you should care. There is so much going on for them to not care.
Education and digital literacy is one of the most important investments a country can make in its future. They are powerful agents of change that improve health and livelihoods thereby contributing to social stability and long-term economic growth. When we call children the future of our nation and we don’t invest in them, our future is bleak. What better way to do that than by ensuring they are educated, literate digitally, and living comfortably?
Some people believe that the work people in the humanitarian space are doing has little or no impact on the society, given the increasing rate of poverty and crime. What is your take on this?
Believing humanitarian work is a waste of time and energy because there is an increase in the rate of poverty and crime is a hasty conclusion to reach and a faulty one at that.
We have a lot of problems in the world contributing to the increase in crime and poverty, and a lot of factors have to come together in order to resolve these issues, humanitarian work being one of them. The reason we’re not seeing the results we want is because most of the people responsible are not doing their jobs as they should.
If people contribute to social causes but the governments and the social institutions are not doing their parts, these problems cannot be solved. But this doesn’t mean that the active cogs in this wheel, humanitarian work in this context, should stop. It would only worsen the situation. The cost of inaction would be higher.
What future project are you planning for Tekisite, and which category of people would the project be meant for?
The next edition of the boot camp is scheduled to hold at Ogun Central, Ogun West, and Ogun East in Ogun State with public and private school students as the targeted beneficiaries, from June 20 to June 30, 2022.
This edition is also scheduled to be accompanied with the Tekisite Summit scheduled to hold at Ogun Tech Hub, Abeokuta, Ogun State on July 1, 2022, with ‘Digital Technology: Bridging the inequality and unemployment gap’ as its theme. Conversations during the event would focus on challenges and solutions in terms of social vices, inequalities and unemployment. This event would deliver an unrivalled marketplace enabling quality businesses through learning, networking and connections, as we work hard to safely combine physical and virtual options for leading discussions on digital literacy.
Does the elderly and women benefit from RMF? If so, tell us how and the recent project these classes of people benefited from the foundation?
Women, both young and old, have benefitted from our End Period Poverty Projects. The project was inspired by a need to provide lasting solutions to period poverty and to reduce the hardship faced by women, especially those in IDPs and in prisons. The Foundation, through the End Period Poverty project promotes healthy menstrual hygiene and also empowers these women by training them on how to make reusable pads. So far, we’ve reached out to over 700 women, with a target to reach out to 5000 women all over Africa this year.
Which major challenges do RMF face, and how are you managing the challenges?
The major challenge we’ve faced so far with our projects is funds. For example, we spend over N500 in the production of a pack of pad; and considering the amount of women we intend to reach out to, raising funds to achieve our aim has not been easy.
With Tekisite, we spend over N30,000 to train a child for a period of two weeks, and considering the longevity of the project and the amount of children we intend to also reach out to, it hasn’t been easy. With volunteers and membership contributions, we’ve been making a pushing through.
How do you manage the stress from your law studies and your RMF engagement? And what do you like doing in your leisure?
Combining academics and active participation in a foundation like RMF has not been easy, but with prioritisation and help from other team members, the workload has been reduced.
For fun, I listen to podcasts and I design.
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