A worthy flight: Tales of week four and the next leap
Tribeulous Fact: On August 21, 2020, students at the YEBC (Young Entrepreneurs Boot Camp) had their first in-person group working session at the Samuel Kanyon Doe Sports Complex .
Behind-the-scenes: In our first seemingly disjointed blog, The leap: Building a TRIBE, we conveyed graphic descriptions of our remote working experiences, highlighted our daily struggles and the thought-forming processes behind the YEBC. We revealed our initial what-the-hell moments about the program, shared our pressing constraints, unveiled our initial successes, and promised to keep you updated on our relentless strides to make the YEBC successful and memorable for all of us.
True to our promise, we are wrapping up the program after two months of non-stop thinking, co-creating, igniting confidence, and building the competence of aspiring entrepreneurial leaders. These past two months of restless program design and implementation have paid off.
Although week four did not go as planned, we maneuvered through the uncertain stumbling blocks as usual. We made decisive amendments to our program schedule, organized mandatory practice sessions for the various teams to design their social impact projects, and hosted our final pitch for the social impact competition on Wednesday, August 26, 2020, instead of Friday, August 21.
Our 12 graders in the program are currently sitting the West African Senior Secondary Certificate Examination (WASSCE), while 9th graders and some of our 11th graders returned to school. We received low-class attendance due to the students’ involvement with their regular schools — a development we will share more highlights on in our September 2020 YEBC impact report.
On Monday, August 17, 2020, our team facilitated a virtual class on Developing a Social Impact project and by 3:00 PM, one of our Master Class facilitators, Pius N. Nkrumah, an IT freelancer, entrepreneur, and recent graduate of Starz Institute of Technology, conducted a session on Google Slides. Pius facilitated a Microsoft Word masterclass in the first week of the program and was excited to present the final session of our digital literacy track in the last week of the YEBC. His Google Slides masterclass provided students with basic insights to design presentations of their projects in preparing for the final pitch session.
On Wednesday, August 19, we organized a test-run to give feedback on each group presentation and it was a healthy learning exercise as reported by our students.
The last entrepreneurial in-person session for the YEBC was conducted on Friday, August 21, 2020. Although 14 of our 20 students showed up, it was another fascinating adventure. The day began with ice breakers and running races on the cinder track at the Samuel Kanyon Doe Sports Complex. After an hour and a few minutes of poetry reading, dancing, running, and games, we had breakfast and assembled in the Youth Connekt Innovation Lab for an inspiring session with Ahmed Konneh, Co-founder of SMART Liberia.
Ahmed Konneh, also a graduate of the African Leadership College, Gatekeeper at Bill and Melinda Gates Foundations, and a generationNOW leader at Mo Ibrahim Foundation, led a two-hour session on Starting a Session Venture. The session originally planned for one hour lasted for two hours with no sign of boredom whatsoever. It was a thrilling learning endeavor with group discussions and thought-provoking debates.
Ahmed drilled the class through the definition of a venture, explained the processes of leading and running a social venture, and inspired the students to think deeply about current and realistic issues confronting social ventures. His session like many other sessions conducted in our series of eduteh and entrepreneurial programs mirrored the ideal learning environment we reimagine for high school students in Liberia. A learning environment where students will not be evaluated through rote memorization, but their unmatched ability to think, create and act.
“Ahmed’s session was great, I learned how to identify a social venture, what a social venture is and how to start a social venture,” Christain Shane, Inaugural YEBC Student.
“From Ahmed Konneh’s session on starting a venture, I understand that a social venture should be a win-win solution, for both the founder and the community,” Agnes Ceodeweh Nagbe, Inaugural YEBC Student.
Following Ahmed’s session, we had lunch and students went into their respective groups to further develop the ideas for their social impact projects. While two groups worked in circles, hanging-heads to the poster sheets clung on the cinder track with markers in their hands, the remaining groups worked on two tables in the lobby at gate ten of the sports stadium. The exercise lasted for about two hours and it was a rare, yet captivating moment for all of the students. Unlike their traditional schools, they found themself in a different learning environment, making research, identifying problems, finding root causes to existing social problems, and developing solutions to address these problems.
After the team working sessions, we took several pictures to conclude the day.
We planned the date for the grand final and practice sessions for every team.
“With excitement I woke up on Wednesday, August 26, 2020, knowing it was the YEBC Social Change Projects presentation day,” Andrew Siafa, YEBC Inaugural class member.
Wednesday, August 26, 2020 came beaming. The final pitch was never meant to be virtual, but we had to make the necessary adjustments to make it as fulfilling as possible due to previous logistical challenges we encountered. We are covering more on these and all other challenges in our impact report. Three of the four teams pitched their ideas to a panel of judges. The three groups developed projects to address issues surrounding improper waste disposal, food preservation, and the media. Whilst it was an enriching initiative for all of us, the insights gathered gave us a broader reflection of what the students learned over the past four weeks.
After two hours of pitching, cross-examination, and feedback from the judges, the program ended with brief remarks and pictorials. Winners from the competition will be announced at the closing program on Friday, September 5, 2020, and more details about the competition will be highlighted in the program report.
Phew! Blogging is exhausting, yet exhilarating! Well, it may seem easy, but not that easy though. Like every curve taken on this journey, blogging is fun and we hope we have tried to keep you in the loop and give you a near-presence of the YEBC. We do this because of our deep love for storytelling and our goal of developing purpose-driven storytellers. As we write the report for the YEBC, we are also writing a final reflection — chronicles of all our flights taken and foreshadowing our next leap.
As Ahmed pointed out in his lecture on starting a social venture — paraphrasing — “to every common problem there must be a win-win solution.” It is obvious, the problem we are painstakingly trying to solve can only be done with all hands on deck, and we could not be more excited to have you on board with us. Thank you for believing in our shared mission, let’s meet again, next week, via this medium.
