PHOTOS: Nascent Community Storms Awka, Embarks On PVC Collection Sensitization, Voter Education, Others

Two years after the idea of what would become a Community impacting society, particularly for young Nigerians by providing educational resources that help them thrive in all areas of life, Right Career Path, a social development and human capital development initiative returns as ‘Nascent Education and Development Initiative’.

Founded in 2020, at the peak of the COVID pandemic and its attendant lockdown when the world was both creative and crouching, the nonet of Toby, Daniel, Kelle, Chibụzọ, Ifeanyị, Chineye, Cj, Gideon, and Augustine found a brilliant excuse to bring together young minds who were better educated and well equipped with the right information and resources to figure out life, career, finance, personal development, etc.

The team couldn’t have been more diverse as the founders were, at the time, mostly young professionals, students, and out-of-campus fresh graduates who saw the need to fill the gap where formal education lagged. So with its first webinar on June 13, 2020, the group walked teenagers and young children through the often daunting process of self-discovery and choosing the most suitable career pathway, and the volumes of impact as evidenced by their happy faces and puffed cheeks informed the group’s decision to continue to hold such monthly webinars.

As the webinars rolled by, month after month, conversations within the small circle began taking more elaborate forms. The webinars began exploring topics in personal development, financial intelligence, nation-building, health, culture, and everyday issues that affect young people in Nigeria. Tipped to build something much bigger than themselves, that will hold in, a family of enlightened young minds who are both change-makers and high flyers in their chosen endeavors the name Nascent Community was proposed, and in July 2021, a paper from the Corporate Affairs Commission put a seal to it.

In their first community service project, Saturday, 3rd, December 2022, themed “Nascent Voter Education Project,” the Community toured the capital city of Anambra, Awka to sensitize residents and indigenes alike, on the need to actively participate in the forthcoming 2023 general elections. The project saw volunteers visiting popular junctions, shops, streets, and marketplaces, sensitizing people on the importance and necessity of exercising their ‘right to vote.’ The project through its outreach efforts was targeted at the ordinary people in the streets, marketplaces, motor parks, shops, etc, hugely neglected and largely under-informed to raise their awareness and participation in the electoral process for higher voter turnout.

Also, it hoped to, by the way of education and advocacy, encourage the voting public to make the right choice of candidates while emphasizing the need to collect their Permanent Voter Card (PVC).

The media tour for the project culminated at the Little Birds Talk Show, 306 Lounge, Amansea, Awka, where the project volunteers articulated the vision of the Community, the purpose of the project, and the need for organizations to take sides with the people by providing the useful information that will help Nigerians, especially the ordinary people make the right choice of leaders, as only an amalgam of informed minds will be able to rise above the monsters of ethnic, religious, political and pocket interest to make the best choice of leaders at all levels of government in the forthcoming 2023 general elections and subsequent elections.

Nascent Education and Development Initiative is relentless with its vision and pointed in its resolve as the Community hopes to, in the coming years, carry out such other community service projects: environmental protection, career fairs, charity outreaches, etc, in other cities in Nigeria. While reacting to the press, one of the organizers, Toby Ude-Akpeh said, “When we started Nascent, we wanted to solve a problem, the pain points of the average Nigerian youth: school, career, finance, relationships, and all-around personal development.

Therefore to address these problems, we thought to provide a community that provides resources for young people to thrive in all aspects of life. And since 2020, we have been doing that through our monthly webinars, weekly newsletters, and blog posts,”.

Nascent has within the period of their operation, proved that the extent that citizen involvement in political, intellectual, and social participation and commitment can be greatly advanced through advocacy helps to drive positive change, especially as it concerns social issues that impact ordinary Nigerians, Nascent, driven by purpose, ethics, and the enthusiasm of its over 300 young people (professionals, students, entrepreneurs, etc,) drawn from across different ethnicities and states of Nigeria, has something of a civic relevance to raise the next generation of young people who are better informed and highly motivated to drive social change through education.