At iTELP 2017, youths charged on creating sustainable future

Youths have been charged to refocus their energy on creating a sustainable future, especially by taking advantage of structured support systems and mentorship, and making impact felt in the building of better families.

Founder, Youth-Minds Alignment and Development Centre, Mr Babatunde Vaughan, whose NGO is dedicated to providing free capacity development programmes for teenagers to grow the skills, values and virtues they need to better their own families and sustainably transform their immediate environments, made this known at the Ibadan Teenage Entrepreneurial Leadership Programme (iTELP) held recently.

The programme featured a nine-member staff and 10 volunteers, all from different parts of the country, who were involved in the training and mentoring of 34 teenagers on world-class model and curriculum, covering vocational skills, emotional intelligence, SDG mapping, social innovation, case study analysis, tech skills, and use of tools like questionnaire, SWOT, Johari, among others.

Speaking with Nigerian Tribune, Vaughan said: “At the point of social innovation, the teenagers (TELPians as they are called) applied our proprietary curriculum and Human Centred social innovation tool, Survey, Create, Evaluate, Evolve and Deliver (SCREED) to solve core challenges encountered for years by about 300 orphans and vulnerable children at three community sites in Ibadan. Need-based solutions provided were focused on material, emotional, educational and hygiene needs valued at about 1,000 USD.”

Noting that today’s youths had the capacity to create a sustainable future, in spite of concerns based on distractions, Vaughan stated that “Nigerian youths of today indeed have the tendency to ensure a sustainable future. What is lacking is inadequate support systems. We can get better with access to structured support and mentorship. If we have this at the grassroots, our youths can translate ideas and channel energy towards personal and societal benefits, and thus, be better armed for a sustainable future.”

Speaking on how society can contribute its quota to ensuring the development of youths, Vaughan noted that beyond the clamour forentrepreneurship, youths needed to be equipped with skills, values and support systems to solve problems in their immediate environments and create viable opportunities for shared prosperity.

He called for the creation of an ecosystem that fosters development of ideas, as this is what young people would thrive on.

“For instance, if parents prioritise parenting, companies direct CSRs to develop ideas at grassroots, retired professionals give free mentorship, religious leaders provide sound unadulterated teachings on morals, and government focuses on creating more policies to enhance youth work, we would have a formidable ecosystem offering strategic and measurable contributions. This I believe we should expect from the society,” he stated.

In his narrative on how he came to establish MAC, Vaughan, who resigned from an ICT job he had worked at for seven years – a decision which he described as tough – affirmed his passion for working with young people, stating that “in spite of not receiving much in terms of financial support, the results have been rewarding.”

Rating support received so far, he said: “In the last five years, I would rate the support we have received to 1.5 out of 10, which is on a free office space for the last one year from Engr Abiodun Oni, and subsidised costs of camp venue at the Institute of Church and Society, Samonda, Ibadan. Aside these, we have been on our own. We wrote detailed proposals to organisations and churches but got no support.

It cost about N3.9 million of personal funds and unpaid loans to deliver this training, yet, total donation, which we are thankful for, was about N130,000. We do have bigger and more promising projects even for year 2017. We hope to receive collaborative efforts and strategies from individuals, organisations, even churches, to drive greater social impact.”

The organisation, established in 2012 and focused on building sustainable families, has had several grassroots programmes targeted at youths, aimed at challenging wrong mind-sets, being able to tangibly accord success to the mental, social, technical and emotional growth that beneficiaries develop through its programmes to work on the mind of man.

“Should schools, businesses, churches, mosques, tribes, and other bodies fall to exist tomorrow, only family ties will remain.

Long-lasting bonds are found in families. This points to our approach for sustainable models and practices, that is, if we can help families harness their potentials and develop the right values, they can pass such on in the lineage. If you look around, every community is a summation of families, and in families we find individuals who make or mar societies. In essence, a community is rich and safe depending on the values, virtues and impacts each family contributes through its members; hence our focus on families,” he stated.