Often times, the new year brings with it so many hopes and dreams. The main question now is, what happens to these hopes and dreams in the middle of the year, or at the end? Or rather, do you have the same hopes and dreams as you had the previous year?
We will take the cue and answer this question. The Sapphires Development Initiative has the vision of harnessing the potentials of youths and creating excellent leaders out of them. This dream has been the same since TSDI was founded; it was the same last year and the years before, and interestingly, it is still the same for this year.
However, a couple of events that we had in the last year could serve as pointers for us to change this vision. Before you ask the question, ‘Why?’ look at it this way: would you keep running the same track over and over again? The logical response to this would be “no.”
Back to some of the pointers and events we had in the last year that showed us we actually achieved our vision. Our highlights would be the Edu4Peace project, which was held at the beginning of the year and cumulatively impacted 7,656 secondary and tertiary students in 7 states in Nigeria. This would be followed by the SustainHerbility Tech Academy (STA), where we are training 40 girls to be tech leaders as opposed to the stereotype plaguing the
Nigerian society, and whose first phase we wrapped the year with. In between, we had our volunteers, facilitators, and executives attend various conferences, including the 9th African Population Conference, Malawi, and win different scholarships, including ERASMUS, DAAD, etc, amongst other things like webinars, fellowships, etc.
Of course, these achievements are grand and affirm the fact that TSDI really aims to harness the potentials of youths, especially the marginalized in rural areas. Yet imagine you keep buying the same brand and model of phone over and over again, and at an even more expensive rate each time. That’s technically not possible. In the same way, TSDI would not be doing that.
Rather, we would be SCALING UP. This means increasing the size and importance of something. We would be doing just that. Increasing the size of our impact, ensuring the essence of our work gains more importance by reaching more people. Furthermore, we would be expanding our involvement in the growth and development of young marginalized youths in the Science, Technology, Education, and Mathematics (STEM) fields. Our scaling up would focus on the technological aspect of education, thereby fostering digital literacy in communities where the rate of literacy alone is very low.
Finally, back to you. What do you plan to do differently? How do you plan to scale up in your plans? What is your hot take on scaling up for the year? Well, we will leave you with one of our favorite quotes from the last year: It’s not about ideas; it’s about making ideas happen (Scott Belsky). Similarly, it’s not about dreams; it’s about making them happen and making them better each time.
Amazing Work TSDI, I am excited scale up with Amazing Tribesmates this 2025!
It was nice working with these pacesetting tribe-mates, in 2024. I look forward to the doing MORE together in 2025
Wow. This is superb.
It’s amazing to know such a crucial transformation is happening. Cheers to impacting lives positively!
Yes it’s time to scale up in 2025!💃💃💃💃💃💃💃💃
Yes, 2024 was a pivotal year for TSDI, and I’m excited to build on that momentum. Now, it’s time to scale up in 2025!