Teach For Nigeria, a non-profit organisation committed to developing young leaders to address educational inequity, has launched its 2022 incubation hub programme, an education-focused social change project, recently in Lagos.
The incubation hub which was first launched in 2020 is part of the organisation’s commitment to supporting the alumni community of its 2-year fellowship programme.
Folawe Omikunle, the chief executive officer of Teach For Nigeria speaking during the launch held online explained that the fight against education inequality is enormous but was optimistic that with the effective implementation of the organisation’s mission, the problems will be addressed.
“We know that the challenge of educational inequity is not what Teach for Nigeria alone can solve but we are very clear about our mission in really developing, galvanising, and cultivating as many dynamic leaders as possible who will share with us in this mission and vision and we will continue to catalyze to ensure they can crystalise solutions across the ecosystem,” Omikunle said.
The focus areas for the 2022 incubation hub are early childhood education, teachers’ training, and development, education in emergencies or conflict areas, poverty and hunger, research, and policy.
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Zainab Akintayo, a Teach for Nigeria alumni and a participant expressed delight in being a beneficiary of the programme.
“I am excited to have been selected as one of the participants for the 2022 incubation hub. Through these initiatives, we are building a vision of what inclusive education should look like. I am excited about scaling up my ‘Smart Garden Initiative’ birthed to improve the food security of poor households and teach students how to launch their gardens at home,” she said.
The programme was tailored to provide the relevant resources to enable social innovators from the Teach for Nigeria alumni to scale their education innovations from the project or prototype stage to an enterprise.
Selected participants are to be provided with relevant training and practical knowledge to build, scale up and sustain their businesses through a 3-month intensive training targeted at national and systems-level social change.
The programme builds on Teach for Nigeria’s long-term strategy designed to proffer solutions to challenges identified within the education sector.
Alumni selected for the 2022 incubation hub will have access to 3 months intensive hybrid ideation workshop and boot camp, the opportunity to win seed funding up to an N1million, and access to post-program support and mentoring by seasoned entrepreneurs.
The initiative is part of the global Teach For All network of over 45 independent partners, working to increase and accelerate the impact of social enterprises that are cultivating the leadership necessary to ensure that “one day, all children will have the opportunity to attain an excellent education.”
