Achiever

How my US summit will impact Edo, Delta youths —Favour Ikhile, dentist, social entrepreneur

Favour Ikhile is a dentist, youth advocate, social entrepreneur, and founder of the Global Entrepreneurs and Leaders Academy (GELA) Youth Development Centre. He was recently sponsored to attend the Global Engagement Summit (GES) in Chicago, United States — where he is currently. In this interview by Kingsley Alumona, he speaks about his social entrepreneurship engagements, youth empowerment, leadership challenges in Nigeria, and the GES summit.

You recently finished your housemanship as a dentist? Where did you do the housemanship, and what was the experience like?

I did my housemanship at one of Nigeria’s tele-dentistry enabled centres, Federal Medical Centre, Asaba. I was among the pioneer set of dental house officers at the medical centre.

You proud yourself as a social entrepreneur, a change-maker, and a youth leader. What does leadership, especially in the grassroots settings, mean to you?

Leadership at the grassroots means positively influencing the next generation to take action for their future. It means passionately being at the frontline of a course that affects people. This is exactly what we are trying to do at the Global Entrepreneurs and Leaders Academy (GELA) Youth Development Centre.

In what ways have you provided local social/leadership services to your community?

After three years of grassroots research and change-making, as an undergraduate, in 2020, I built a platform that helps undergraduates and graduates in Africa enthusiastically compete to gainfully upgrade their soft skills, as well as leadership and digital skills, when the education and economic sectors were deeply affected by the COVID-19 lockdown. We are attempting to help over 420 million youths in Africa who fall below the baseline of being gainfully employed and are thus grouped as either being at the risk of being unemployed or underemployed according to the African Development Bank report.

My vision of diversity and inclusion at GELA is to create a safe place with a gamifying feature where undergraduates and unemployed graduates can happily compete with their peers to upgrade their employability skills without a feeling of inferiority complex and get rewarded for doing so.

You were recently selected, on a funded capacity, to participate in the Global Engagement Summit (GES) in Chicago, United States. What is the GES about? And what was the application process like?

GES is a product of innovation and passion. This is how social change starts. In 2005, two Northwestern undergraduates, Nathaniel Whittemore and Jonathan Marino, wanted to provide a collaborative space for student change-makers and to develop a stronger global connection for Northwestern students. The first conference hosted 75 delegates from 20 different countries. Since then, in the 15 Summits held so far, over 500 delegates from 45 countries around the world have attended.

GES is a student-run social innovation conference that gathers young change-makers from around the world to collaborate, discuss and further their social ventures. GES believes that by connecting and empowering students they can begin to meet pressing social needs.

The application usually occurs in the last quarter of the year, and it is visible on various opportunity websites (e.g opportunity desk), as well as through a simple Google search. Usually, a Google form is filled and applicants wait for the selection team to decide from the pool of thousands of global applicants.

What qualities and qualifications would you say you possessed that landed you the selection?

I think the first quality I would gently like to highlight is resilience. After about three years of idea implementation, I had been selected for three international conferences in 2020, one of which was GES, but could not go due to travel policies. So, I decided to reapply this time.

The second would be storytelling. This was one thing I learnt during the lockdown, while indoors. Instead of lamenting on the loss, I went back to the drawing board and learnt some storytelling tips from some mentors.

Then, innovation. They want to see how innovative your idea sounds, beyond how interesting your story sounds.

Finally, for qualifications, I would say the first thing is meeting the eligibility criteria and then, staging one’s idea appropriately. By this, I mean, identifying the exact stage one is in change creation, that is the prototype stage or perhaps, the growth stage, etc. This will enable one know what one requires and be able to state so unequivocally.

What does the GES funding cover? What other benefits would you gain from the sponsorship and participation?

The summit last for five days. It is fully funded. There is an opportunity to meet sector-specific mentors, earn a verified certificate, and pitch for additional funding for my project.

What are you expected to do or engage in as a participants of the summit? Any talk, exhibition, lecture from you?

I will engage in workshops, seminars, competitions and a tour around Chicago. Also, I was among the few delegates who received double selections — meaning, I was selected to pitch about my work (the GELA Skillup-360 project) as well, before everyone.

What new and innovative things did you learn from the summit? How did the organisers and your follow participants of the summit influence your life and career?

I learnt about how and where to start from in building a brand. I learnt some new concepts about the Google brand from one of the guests who works with Google. I seem to have found the missing framework we needed as a springboard to scale. I saw young people, far younger than I was, who were start-up founders. I learnt how to be bold at initiating conversations. Lastly, I learnt about mutual respect and how to fail forward.

At the end of the summit, what do you intend to return to Nigeria with? And how would you use that to impact your community?

I will be returning with a better knowledge, more US-based project partners, more programme mentors and possible prospective funding (after outcome of pitching competition). I intend to carry out a six-month project to impact 300 youths in Edo and Delta states upon arrival.

What Nigerian leadership framework are you not comfortable with? And how could these faults in the framework be corrected?

Actually, when we talk about leadership framework, it is made up of three key elements: Leading oneself, leading a people, and leading an organisation (or government). I am not comfortable with the fact that the majority of leaders who fight their way into positions are often rated good based on the last framework. So, we have people who score very low in the first two.

These faults in Nigerian leadership structure could be corrected by giving the people a voice. Their choices and their votes must count. Technological innovations to assist with delivering credible elections and also obtaining suggestions from the masses should be introduced. Lastly, leadership grooming organisations should be encouraged through offers such as access to facilities for programmes at no cost and access to grant funding. These will help groom future leaders and encourage creativity and innovation.

Elections are one of the ways true leadership could be delivered to the people. How would you situate this statement in the context of the conduct and outcome of the last general elections in the country?

Nigeria needs sincere, competent, intelligent and service-oriented leaders. The last election was the only hope millions of young Nigerians had conceived could serve as a means of safeguarding their future. Well, reports gathered so far reveals that there are still obvious controversies and expressions of disappointment from the masses regarding the conduct and outcome of the last general election. In my opinion, whatever the outcome might be, it should also reflect in the satisfaction of majority of the masses who voted.

Do you have plans of contesting for any political position in the future? And where do you see yourself in five years?

Not really, may be later, but definitely not in the next five years.

Well, in the next five years, I see myself meeting physically with notable entrepreneurs and politicians in Nigeria and globally. I see myself gaining favour and recording new sponsors for our skillup-360 project and annual international conference such that we hit 20,000 youths impacted since commencement. Lastly, academically, I should have completed two postgraduate programmes.

What advice do you have for youths and young people who wish to go into social and humanitarian endeavours like you?

First, find something that worries you. Secondly, start early. Thirdly, look for mentorship and be focused. Define the boundaries of your interactions. This has helped me a lot. So, I try to pay this back by offering to mentor hundreds of young people including those who reach out via a Google search of my name. Lastly, be resilient. Always learn to fail forward.

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