The Youth Café Attends LEAP Africa's Youth Day Of Service Press Conference.
“‘At the end of the day, it is not about what you have or even what you’ve accomplished… it is about who you’ve lifted up, who you’ve made better. It’s about what you’ve given back’ ”
The Youth Day of Service is an initiative of LEAP Africa, an organization with four areas of focus inclusive of leadership, effectiveness, accountability and professionalism. LEAP Africa believes that Youthful Energy, Creativity & Drive + An Enabling Environment (favorable policies, funding, access, opportunities) = A transformed Africa
Dotts Media house team showed support for the youth day of service by donating litter bins in order to keep Akpuoga village clean.
The meeting commenced with a video presentation of LEAP Africa’s work in Nigeria with projects like MamaMoni foundation that engages youth in giving out food relief items to female low-income earners. With Femi Taiwo, LEAP Africa’s Executive Director talking about the sustainable development of our communities, nations, the African continent and the world. He also talked of having a different notion for the international youth day; rather than having conversations about convenience we should have one about action and the fact that young people should be ‘youthful and useful’. He called for the collaboration of development youth organizations to rally young people in their constituencies and jurisdictions to champion for change because Africa is fortunate to have a youthful population.
In the presented videos we had Osarume Akenzua, the senior programmes coordinator asking, ‘We all have dreams or strong desires for the kind of change that we want to see in Africa… but are you ready or willing to be that change and make that change? When you think about a better Africa, what do you see?’
Catherine Busari, the programmes officer responding by saying ‘Improved standards of living for every family and individual, the African children should have access to free and quality education.’
Osarume and Busari agreed that young girls should be safe, free and able to dream big, everyone should access quality and affordable health care at all levels, and Africans should be able to work and live freely in their communities while thriving in agriculture, health and nutrition and food security.
The most notable quotes from the presentation were, ‘Remember that the happiest people are not those getting more, but those giving more’ by H. Jackson Brown Jr and ‘At the end of the day, it is not about what you have or even what you’ve accomplished… it is about who you’ve lifted up, who you’ve made better. It’s about what you’ve given back’ by Denzel Washington.
Live Stream on YouTube on 22nd July 2021
After the video presentation, the programmes manager facilitated the conference, inviting the partners: Femi Taiwo, LEAP Africa’s Executive Director, and Simotwo Zainabu and Olaife Elori from the Nigerian network of NGOs who later addressed the conference by stating what their different organizations are all about and answering questions from the journalists to further expound and give meaning to their work.
Femi Taiwo started by welcoming everyone then proceeded to address the Youth Day of Service as an annual social impact campaign initiated by LEAP to celebrate the efforts of young people in bringing about change in their communities.
This was followed by a presentation of the Youth Day of Service as purposed to engage the heads, hands, and hearts of African youth. Initiated in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Youth Day of Service was to mobilize young people across Nigeria to bring hope to their communities, awakening in them a sense of urgency to contribute towards meeting the sustainable development goals.
After which we had remarks from some of the present partners during the conference who expounded on their reasons to support the initiative. For example, Simotwo Zainabu, the youth engagement officer from AUC youth division, spoke of co-creation of resources to capacitate the young African through skills development. Further, Olaife Elori pointed out that in supporting the youth there’s more inclusion and more sustainability.
The conference ended with a Q & A session among the media personnel and the partners. Most questions were addressed by Femi Taiwo who explained that LEAP Africa is all about inspiring, equipping and enabling young innovators, who are trying to make a difference in their communities and that the youth and the societies including women and children are the beneficiaries of their projects.
The way forward for LEAP Africa aimed at championing social change and community development and get over one thousand projects executed by a minimum of 5000 young people across multiple countries in Africa through the collaboration of youth-led and youth-serving organizations. As one of the implementing partners, The Youth Café is excited and confident that we can achieve incredible feats through this collaboration as we chart a way forward towards achieving a youthful and useful Africa.
Do you have any questions or comments? Contact us or give us some feedback.