Last month, I led a team of six friends and colleagues from New York City to the city of Lagos, Nigeria to launch our first YouthBank Center in the Surelere district.
Our launch trip was the culmination of over two years of work by team members in Nigeria, the US, the UK, and Canada. After two years of conference calls, long email chains, long gchats, ‘road shows’ to potential donors, expert interviews, late-night discussions, late-night grant writing, and late-night number crunching, we found ourselves in the teeming, frenetic megacity of Lagos, with eight carefully selected ‘YouthBank Fellows,’ a newly-renovated YouthBank Center, half a dozen press mentions in Nigerian newspapers, and a roomful of potential partners and donors celebrating our success at the US Consulate in Lagos.
Today we are monitoring our operations in Lagos, developing new ways for our all-volunteer executive team to work efficiently across three continents, and engaging in discussions with the CSR groups of major Nigerian banks to fund YouthBank as we scale up by expanding our work across the country.
It’s been quite a ride, and we’re excited to share some of the adventures and misadventures we had and some of the lessons we’ve learned so far. Among them are: how to launch a social venture on a shoestring budget; how to work well with a diverse team; and how to haggle with street vendors, taxi drivers, realtors, singers – just about everyone – in Lagos!
Talk to you soon,
Clara
