Partners Program - Strategy and Innovation for Development

Partnering with innovative change-makers through leadership training, collaborative capacity building and funding for pilot projects towards positive social change.

Problem:

Since 2010, my co-founder and I have supported individuals, small enterprises and nonprofits in Nigeria with grants and loans. During this time, we observed that grassroots solutions devised and honed with the input of local stakeholders made the most impact, and were more sustainable.

But our experience also showed a gap in the capacity necessary to maximize efforts to create sustainable development in their communities. There is minimal evidence to base development work on, and change-makers often fly by the seat of their pants. These challenges limit thousands of potential business, policy and advocacy leaders and their impact in their communities.

For instance, in 2011, Laipo Reads, a literacy NGO we support, started with individual donors, and basic planning and reporting. Through them, more than 3,000 children each read about 10 books in about 3 years, but support dwindled, with no SMART objectives nor key performance indicators to attract large grants and expand programs.

Between 2014 – 2016, three social enterprises we support received $5,000 grants from Tony Elumelu Entrepreneurship Fund, with training and mentoring that enabled them to adopt a more strategic approach. These enterprises have now been able to scale operations, however this fund is restricted to businesses.

Solution

SI4DEV Partners Program is branded on inspiring positive social change; a vision we believe that potential beneficiaries of the program will connect with. Building on lessons learned, the program provides a means for diverse changemakers, including women, disenfranchised youths in low-income communities to benefit from training, collaboration, mentoring, research and documentation tools, and significant corporate sponsorship.

This is an attractive one-year program with opportunities to collaborate on development plans, and receive capacity building from committed, inspiring and influential experts. After the first 6 months, participants with the best project plans are matched with pilot funding. Alumni also have access to scholarships, paid e-learning courses, coaching, live projects, and opportunities to visit local and national institutions.

The program will improve lives by promoting behavioral and culture change, investing in local people, and increasing the use of innovative, evidence-based strategies to achieve lasting results in governance, health, education, and enterprise. It will also offer pathways to upskill, reskill, and retrain workers, as well as connect them to the demands of existing employers and newly created job opportunities.

Impact

The SI4DEV Partners Program will provide economic opportunity to direct and indirect beneficiaries of our program and resulting community projects. With $2,000 spent in the first 6 months, we have impacted 300 direct beneficiaries in 30 communities, and indirectly reached 10,000 people through various community transforming projects including humanitarian donations, malaria prevention, drug abuse campaigns, vocational skills training, handwashing promotion, voter education, and civil society engagement. Over 89% of direct beneficiaries have reported improvement in their communication, teamwork, critical-thinking, problem-solving, evaluation and evidence-based decision making through participation in the program.

When scaled, our project will transform 10,000 direct beneficiaries of the program, activate development pilots in over 1,000 communities, with approximately 3,000,000 lives improved within ten years. 

The SI4DEV Partners Program is innovative in providing potential community leaders with tools and an accessible platform to participate in their own capacity building with a wide range of inspiring subject-matter experts to generate new ideas and share best practices. Our solution supports the piloting and scaling of projects with demonstrated sustainability and economic development opportunities for community members.
We also plan to use data and outcomes from the training program and resulting pilot projects to develop a reproducible framework that local leaders can apply to systematically and successfully create new technologies, jobs, or entire industries.

The Inaugural class of the program launched January 2018 using Google tools, a wordpress website, groups on Facebook, WhatsApp as well as Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn. This program offers collaborative and shared learning with technology tools now available at the grassroots level. Staff and mentors provide downloadable resources and support to beneficiaries online (Skype, Hangouts, Email, WhatsApp) and in-person; in ways that maximize strengths and develop competencies in making effective decisions, partnership and collaboration, management, communication and leadership.  

Over the next 12 months, the SI4DEV Partners Program aims to provide formalized resources for our leadership development and mentoring modules as well as increase the funding assistance available to selected partners and their pilot community development projects. We are currently working on our first pilot project and have already collated 10 more proposals for review and approval. We plan to complete four pilot projects in the next 12 months.

Our vision over the next three to five years is to:

1. Enhance the capacity of trained community leaders and, 2. Improve the lives of their communities. 
Our success metrics and Year 5 targets; 
Numbers trained - a minimum of 400 potential community leaders. 
Number retained - at least 10% enrollees for continuous support. 
Number of pilot projects funded – 40 pilots through a 6-month pilot. 
Number of successful pilots scaled - 4 projects with the most stakeholders support.
Other improvement metrics – such as jobs, earning power, available amenities, schools/hospitals, improved service delivery, opportunities for growth, health indicators, productivity, etc.

The program is amplified online and offline utilizing our website, social media and word of mouth. We leverage digital advertising and blogs to reach the increasing numbers of Nigerians in rural communities who are beginning to have access to the internet and smartphone apps. We also value partnerships and are working with community leaders on the ground to bring this project to more people in face-to-face encounters. Our significant reach through our trained beneficiaries and their funded pilot projects gives us the platform to deliver real change and retain indirect beneficiaries.

The program has direct 300 beneficiaries registered on our website and/or our WhatsApp groups through which they have received training and resources. 50 participants are matched with mentors for support with developing their project plans and connect for a minimum of 2 hours a month online and in-person. 
The first funded pilot project is a cassava and palm fruit processing facility in rural Uyo. It will employ 50 local youth in building and operating the facility and allow 100 local farmers to process their farm produce more easily, leading to economic development for up to 10,000 people. 

Our target population are youth (18 - 40) in grassroots communities. By year 3, we will impact 1,000 direct beneficiaries and launched 50 pilot projects, thus reaching another 500,000 people through training, successful community projects, and related community development activities. 

Our model is based on research and best practice, using the 4Es: Envision – Engage – Empower – Exemplify. 
1. Envision a shared mental model for delivering change 
2. Engage selected target population to commit to the vision 
3. Empower them to understand and practice the components
4. Exemplify their learning through successful project pilots.

Our team has over 50 years combined public, private, and nonprofit experience. 

Nkem Akinsoto has work and volunteer experience in strategic direction, project management and health promotion with a Master’s degree in Public Health Research from Edinburgh University. 
Ify Malo has in-depth understanding governance models, and held Senior Policy Adviser positions at the Ministry of Power in Nigeria, where she led several initiatives to engage national media and donor groups in policy promotion. 
Akin Akinsoto’s expansive experience in the IT industry has led him to appreciate the value of information in guiding choices for better outcomes. 

Direct beneficiaries will have enduring positive impacts to the communities they engage with as future leaders in various capacities. Also, while we remain nonprofit, our plan is find the business opportunity for each pilot project and any follow-up proposals that will be selected for scaling/expansion. With thorough planning, monitoring and evaluation, a significant percentage of our projects will possibly grow into institutions that will have the added benefit of being run using the best practices learned through our program, such as using innovative and evidence-based strategies for decision making. 

Our program is designed with a multi-sectoral plan in four strategic areas – health, education, governance and enterprise. We already seek out willing and receptive partners in the government and NGO sectors who understand our approach to work with us. 

However, we need more funding and technical assistance from Solvers to strengthen our staff and volunteers and to upgrade our tools and resources and to better identify projects for pilot and scaling.

With the size and population of Nigeria, and the percentage of people in our target age range, the scale of the problem can seem daunting. A huge effort is required to change deeply-entrenched cultures and a laissez-faire work ethic that does not appropriately value knowledge, skill and meticulousness. As a fairly new organization, we also get some doubt from potential partners about our ability to meet our goals. We hope that Solve and MIT's network and profile will boost our standing and enable us commit to significant impact as quickly as possible.