Young African Leaders Initiative Cohort 3 - Nigeria

On August 19^th 2017, I was selected for YALI ( Young African Leaders Initiative) RLC (Regional Centre), West Africa, a training program launched by the United States government as a signature effort to invest in the next generation of African leaders. I learnt and experienced that when one interacts, share ideas and solve problems together we only realize how strong and powerful we are as a people. In the intensively five weeks training, I saw a beautiful African future. I saw great hopes for Africa and my five weeks stay in Nigeria, Lagos, I interacted with people from nine countries in West Africa. We were placed into groups, where we worked and as a result, because of my team player skills, I was able to organize team members and we emerged first position during the creative night at YALI. Understanding how people work and appreciating efforts towards making communities, countries and the world at large a better place to live in is what keeps me going. My experience in the YALI program did not only help me interact with people but also gave me the confidence to express myself around people. I also engaged others, outside of my group by organizing a blog/website sessions, where I trained people on how to create a blog. Upon completion of the five weeks training, I was able to collect all photos that were taken by the Camera man (over 2000 pictures), and uploading them on a Google drive, which was a need by most people and requested, so this allowed me to engage and solve that issue with almost everyone else by sharing the link to the photos to a group that was created. This did not only help me get all the pictures but to be able to collaborate with people individually as I am in contact with most of them as a result.