Raising New Voices Initiative

I am applying for The Elevate Prize in order to scale the herculean work of our organisation to the next level.

At Raising New Voices, our work is at the heart of what the government in Nigeria would rather not see happen - young people with a voice and a passion to see change in their communities and ready to lead that change.

With The Elevate Prize, our work at Raising New Voices will reach more young people in Nigeria and our ambitious goals will be realised sooner than we envisaged. Currently limited by resources, we leverage online media and technology to reach young people who live in underserved communities yearning for a voice to join them in demanding accountability and good governance while working within our resource portfolio to physically impact on these communities.

The Elevate Prize will mean that we can physically raise more voices and champion more causes for even more Nigerians.

I grew up in what you could call a mansion in Nigeria, even by today's standards, but surrounded by homes where families could barely feed or afford to send their wards to good schools. My sense of compassion started during that childhood. I made friends even as a young kid and have conversations that transcended class status while hoping that something would change for the better for my friends and their parents.

When my father's factory shut down because of political leaders who would rather be corrupt than ensure an employer of labor remains in business, my life's mission shifted to ensuring that political leaders in society (who I now understood were responsible for keeping my friends and their parents in perpetual poverty) would answer to the people or be replaced. I was 17 then and have since pursued a mission that replicates itself in Raising New Voices - raising a new set of advocates and political leaders while advocating for change.

I have volunteered for causes, organised numerous campaigns, trained activists and gotten involved in mobilising a movement of young people interested in politics and political leadership - through the power of example.

In Nigeria, there are  ~210 million people. In 20 years, this population would have doubled to 400 million. More than 60% of the population is younger than 35 years and the average age is 18.6. A country of mostly young people is governed by septuagenarians. The average age of elected officers is 56 years

The disconnect in governance reflects in a 42% unemployment rate amongst young people aged 18 to 35, it reflects in an insecurity crisis that has rated Nigeria the third worst governed country in the world (CGI Index), it reflects in the policy choices that the country makes for the future, created for us, without us.

This exclusion of young people and the issues affecting young people will reverberate 20 years from now, when the world's 3rd most populated country by then would be suffering from today's policy consequences.

We see this future and we are working hard to create an alternative one. As activists, we advocate for changes imposed on youths preventing them from getting elected, we train young activists and give them skills to call for change and through fellowships, we raise new breed of political leaders. We are an activist and political leadership pipeline

At the core of our work is our quest for innovation. Like lazy eggheads, our circumstance and our cause requires an ability to seek low cost, high impact, technology driven ways to achieve our goals. We do not just seek to find the easy way out, we find ways by which we can achieve more with less and reach more of our target demography.

We are driving political participation through the use of a tech enabled web portal that guarantees access to any political party in the country from one hub and also provides a wide spectrum of information on political participation.

We are leveraging online meetings to conduct trainings for young people interested in taking up a cause in their local community and training on how to organise campaigns.

We are using the power of social media to mobilise a movement of young people interested in removing all barriers to participation for young people in the political process and advocacy for change

Much more importantly, our sustained interaction approach to achieving our goal of planting youth activists and youth political leaders in every local government area in Nigeria is one that is yet to be replicated.

Every community on the face of the earth needs a champion and a leader for their cause at every point in time. Societies that have progressed into civilisation and prosperity have done so because leaders and champions have emerged and continued to emerge, with a core belief that things can get better.

Our organisation is committed to raising these champions for all communities in Nigeria. As a goal, we are raising leaders in every one of the 774 local governments in our country before the end of the decade - someone who will give a voice to the problems and effect solutions that are community based and progressive.

Our activism, removes all barriers to participation for competent young leaders to emerge, our fellowship trains leaders and activists and gives them skills to make change happen, our mobilisation creates movements that help amplify causes in local communities, our technology-enabled platforms educates hundreds of thousands on getting involved.

The sustainable development goals, as fancy as they appear, are issues of life and death, issues of standard of living, issues of quality of live, issues of hope and aspirations for many of our citizens. We intend to make these issues better for them.