The founder of Asake Incorporated (Asake Inc) in the United State of America and Asake Empowerment Foundation in Nigeria, Mrs. Adenike Oyabambi, has charged youths to be fully involved in entrepreneurship in order to make things work properly in society.
Oyabambi stated this during a webinar on Sustainable Development Goals 4, last week Saturday.
Present at the webinar include; the Chief Press Secretary to Governor of Kwara State, Mallam Rafiu Ajakaye, and Chief Executive Saving African Youths Dream Initiatives, Abdullateef Abdulkareem.
While speaking on the theme “the need for quality education”, she said, it is high time everyone makes changes in their own little way within their immediate environment, advising that youths should have an entrepreneurship mindset.
The founder of Asake Incorporated said, “My Foundations were born out of the love for the kids and the love I have for my country. I feel something great must be done to Nigeria. I feel there should be a paradigm shift in whatever we do and this has to start with the kids. I feel there is a need to help kids from humble backgrounds achieve greatness in life. I also feel there is a need to make changes by enrolling the kids from grassroots to school. My plan is not only for them to have access to education but to also engage them with skills.
“50% of what is holding American today are the middle class. And who are the middle class? They are entrepreneurs. All this ideology that I am a graduate I can’t do farming, or plumbing or other works should be rechecked. We want to change the world in our own little way. Yes, everybody can change the world. You can’t save the world, you can only make the changes in your own little way within your immediate environment.
“It is good to travel out of the country, but you have to also develop an entrepreneur mindset. Make use of critical thinking. If you have the skill, think of how you can market it. Be concerned about your community and your country. If you say you don’t care about what is going on in your country, then, it is affecting you. And by that, you are voting for the wrong people. Start listening and be involved. If the politicians promised to do something and failed to fulfill the promises, you have the power to vote them out.
“Engage social media and networking. Get close to people that you think can inspire you. Develop a good reading habit. Read books and watch interesting movies that can influence your life. Everyone needs to be actively involved to make things work. It is a collective efforts, we should not leave everything to the government.”
When asked about the plans her foundations have in stock, Oyabambi expressed that the foundation has 5 programmes to change the narrative at the grassroots level.
“We have 5 programmes, we have education, skill, disk (community work), empowerment and outreaches. In community work, we go to an impoverished area, when they have schools but the kids will have to trek miles to get water, we can build a borehole for them. Or maybe in the nearest future, we can build a class for them or join the government to build a classroom.
“Outreaches is when we go to schools to distribute learning materials to the pupils. The last one we did, we distributed over 8000 notebooks to 13 local government schools in Kwara State. We have 31 kids for our free programme. We actually want to get them enrolled in schools. They are the kids from poor homes that are really brilliant. We want to be involved in their education right from primary school or whatever level they are either SS1 or 2 all to tertiary level.
“We engaged the teachers and the parents. So, when we go to these teachers to let them know what we are doing to these particular kids. We have seen principals that are really receptive. We go to a public school, tell their principal we want to sponsor like 5 brilliant students who are from a humble background. We give them like 2 weeks to get us these students, when we go back there, we will discover that the principal has not done anything.
“Another challenge we face is monetary value. We do everything out of our pockets. We are not complaining about it because we have a vision. Sometimes people won’t acknowledge what you say, they acknowledge what you do. They will want to join you with what you are doing. We have seen people coming out to join us in what we are doing. This is not to make a profit, this is not for selfish reasons. We are hear because we want to change Kwara State, we want to change Nigeria, we want to change Africa in our little way,” she said.