My Volunteer Journey & Reason Behind HSSN Africa

(This story only highlights my volunteer experiences and does not include legal, consulting, and finance work experiences)

My Volunteer Journey

My volunteer journey began in 2017, my freshman year at the university. Initially, I did it to develop my leadership qualities and overcome low-self esteem, but with every new project I participated in, I got more invested in impacting young people.

<aside> 💡 The impact has always been more important to me than money. I decided to pursue the things I was naturally interested in if I didn’t have to worry about resources or finances, which is how I found fulfilment.

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My 1st volunteer project involved organizing a women-focused conference for 7 months in 2017. The conference aimed to inspire female law students to build great legal careers and become influential in the industry. I worked in the partnership team, and I was able to secure 2 partners that sponsored the event.

The same year, I volunteered at my church in October 2017 to organize and implement a Women Empowerment Outreach in Ebute Metta Community in Lagos State. The project aimed to equip women with vocational skills and provide them with resources to start off low-capital-intensive businesses. Through the program, 50 women were impacted.

In 2018, I volunteered for 5 major projects; this was the year I had my 1st international volunteer experience. I worked on the following projects:

• a zero hunger project with Feed for Life Foundation in the Iwaya community in Lagos state,
• a sexual and reproductive health project with Vibrant Girls Development Initiative at a government-owned primary school,
• a financial literacy project during Global Money Week with AIESEC Lagos
• the Youth 4 Global Goals (Y4GG) annual project organized by AIESEC Lagos. As the Vice Coordinator for the project, I trained and coordinated a team of 50 volunteers to facilitate an SDG (Sustainable Development Goals) awareness session in 10 schools and to 1000 students in Lagos mainland and
• a sexual and reproductive health rights project targeting adolescent girls and young women in Kenya, and primarily on reducing gender-based violence

<aside> 💡 Volunteering has a lot of advantages - doing things that matter, increasing your network of change makers, gaining soft and technical skills development, and increasing self-awareness and credibility. I gained all these from volunteering and I shared more about my journey and learnings in this Instagram live session.

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In 2019, I did some interesting projects with the Lagos Model United Nations Conference Committee, Investment Society, AIESEC Lagos in Nigeria, Your Voice Initiative, and AIESEC Ethiopia centered on gender equality, financial literacy, and partnership for the goals (SDG 17). I was excited that the experiences I gained from my Kenyan trip were useful for my role at LMUN; I suggested the topic that was the subject matter of the UN Women's committee.

<aside> 💡 My roles in AIESEC were my most challenging because they involved encouraging volunteerism amongst youth in Nigeria and facilitating their international volunteer experiences (like the one I went for in Kenya). I successfully convinced and managed the experiences of 15 people who traveled to Ethiopia, Ghana, the Benin Republic, Kenya, and the Netherlands.

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In 2020, I experienced my first long university strike that lasted 10 months (other strikes lasted 2 months or less and didn’t affect an academic year). Strikes are embarked on by university teachers over better working conditions and improved funding for the universities. That was also the 1st time I spent 2 years as a penultimate student (a 4th year student for 2 years). But it was also a lot of time on my hands that I maximized to work and volunteer. In 2020,