20 Years of JAN Impact and its Wave-making Alumni
Junior Achievement Nigeria ( JAN) is celebrating 20 years of living its mission “to inspire and educate young people to become conscientious business leaders”. This it has done consistently by implementing economic education programs that develop attitudes and skills necessary for personal success and social responsibility. And it has some high achieving alumni to show for it!
By forging relationships with more than 4,000 volunteers over the past 20 years, JAN has reached over 970,000 students in over 20,000 classrooms in all the 36 states across the country and the FCT. This puts it on track to reach its one million students milestone by the end of 2019. A look at some of its programs (yes, we are spelling programs American style because JAN has its startup and linguistic foundations in the US and formally spells its projects the American way) gives you an idea that this tall order will be one more milestone ticked off by year end.
The JA Company Program:
This teaches senior secondary school students how to start and run their own businesses. A success story from this program is Iyinoluwa Aboyeji. In 2005, while in senior secondary school, he produced love shaped cupcakes for sale on St Valentine’s Day. The JA Company Program taught him the fundamentals of how to start a business. That in turn sparked his interest in entrepreneurship. Iyinoluwa, JAN is proud to announce, is the co-founder of Flutterwave, a payment gateway to connect Africa to the global economy. He also
The Venture in Management Program (VIMP):
Designed as a one-week intensive “mini-mba” session to introduce selected members of the National
Youth Service Corps to the different facets of managing a business, it takes them through the process required for making crucial business decisions and developing skills for general management. Since inception in 2000, VIMP success stories of impact include that of Tunji Eleso, who is a VIMP 2001 alumnus. Since attending the program, Tunji has led investing efforts at Co- creation Hub Nigeria through Growth Capital by CCHUB with responsibility for providing early stage support and funding to technology ventures solving real challenges in our society.
As well, Adenike Adeyemi is a VIMP 2002 alumnus. A development sector professional with over 17 years of experience in nonprofit management, enterprise development and youth enablement strategies, she currently serves as the Chief Executive Officer, FATE
Foundation, Nigeria’s foremost non-profit organization focused on enabling aspiring and emerging Nigerian entrepreneurs start, grow and scale their business. Adenike credits VIMP as the main pivot for expanding her horizon and career perspective in the nonprofit and development space.
Leadership Empowerment Achievement and Development (LEAD) Camp: This was created to inspire and empower young girls to become high-achieving women leaders. Since inception in 2002, Junior Achievement Nigeria has organized over seven LEAD camps. Fueled by the success stories of beneficiaries such as Ink Eze, Founder, Aso Ebi Bella which is an online community of African attire lovers and Oduolayinka Osunloye, Director of Marketing, Innovation and Impact at Junior Achievement Nigeria, JAN has remained inspired to continue with offering LEAD Camp to more young girls across Nigeria.
JAN, via its programs is helping elevate entrepreneurship in Nigeria by supplying the skills needed to drive tomorrow’s organisations. As we know, it’s not enough to be enterprising or to want to set up a business. Without the requisite skill set, those businesses won’t survive and so we might have disillusioned though enterprising folks heading right back to the employment queues. CSI applauds JAN for doing what it does and for identifying youngsters as its target. In another ten years, we shall, we believe, have a lot more distin