The Halfway School

Every year, over 1.5 million high school students sit for the national university entry exam in Nigeria, but less than 30 percent are admitted into university (Stears Data, 2021), leaving more than 70 percent of these young people most of whom are vulnerable stages in life and less likely attain better qualifications and life skills to thrive in an increasingly competitive entrepreneurial and career landscape like Nigeria; the most populous African country in the world. A 2021 study by The Changing Childhood project revealed that 85 percent of Nigerian youths ‘feel pressured to succeed’, and ages 14-19 are more saddled with adult responsibilities, and intense pressure from society (online and offline), yet lack adequate skills, and often resort to settle for menial jobs, or carry out illicit activities like internet fraud to survive, or become pregnant in their teenage years. 

Ikorodu is the most populated, and least developed town in the city of Lagos Nigeria with over 1.4 million residents and home to 20 villages. Despite its rapidly growing population, its distance from the city further serves to isolate the over 60% youth population in the community from accessing quality education or skills development opportunities. With geographical and financial barriers at the forefront, the number of young people who due to lack of financial resources, or poor academic performance, cannot transition to tertiary education has increased tremendously over the years often causing them to face the stark reality of navigating their way in life with very limited career options. 

The halfway school project therefore seeks to address the problem of limited career options  posed to young people in transitional stages in life living in underserved communities who do not have higher academic certifications which ultimately leads to an increase in joblessness, and poverty. 

The Halfway Learning Center is a tech-powered learning center designed to cater to the learning needs of post-high school leavers in rural communities who cannot transition to university due to lack of finance but lack relevant career, entrepreneurial, and leadership skills by leveraging project-based learning methods to equip them with skills needed to thrive not just survive in an evolving world. The Halfway school runs for 18 months and serves as a transition space for teenagers between 15 and 19 to learn life skills needed to become creators and not just consumers, think critically,  and attain hands-on leadership, and entrepreneurial skills. Beyond setting up these learning spaces, the halfway school serves as a place that helps young teenagers with rough childhood experiences adjust safely as they transition to adulthood. 

Using Hands-on project-based learning methods, we intend to empower the student's life skills including:   

• Leadership and Social skills- Building on the principle that “the mind controls our thoughts, and thoughts control our actions”, we intend to expose the students to core leadership skills, as well as inculcate proper social skills like formal and informal communication, networking, relationship management, and team management. To achieve this, we are leveraging behavioral modification technological tools
• Digital Skills- We live in a digital world, yet 7 out of 10 of the students we have trained in Ikorodu have never used a computer before. To bridge this vast digital divide, we will be offering alongside the entrepreneurial and green skills at the halfway learning center, the opportunity for young people to acquire basic digital skills, especially for those who hope to take on a corporate career in office administration, and virtual assistant jobs. 

• Green skills- This will focus on training young people on how to Upcycle readily available waste products in the community into Art, furniture, school bags, and products that can be converted into scalable businesses while healing the environment. We intend to also use this class to champion climate leadership among the students. Through this class, students will learn about the impact of plastic waste on the environment, and also acquire practical vocational skills that can be used to start a business that will save the environment 

• Entrepreneurship skills: In this class, we intend to teach the participants skills needed for successful entrepreneurship. This includes teaching them financial literacy, how to design and build a scalable business,  marketing and branding, customer retention, and how to identify investment and funding opportunities. Through this class, the student will learn more about the economy, responsible savings and investment.  

Internship Pipeline: An internship pathway will be created so graduates from the program can commence workplace internships at start-ups, corporations, and schools to further solidify their enterprise and workplace skills thereby reducing unemployment post-program.  

This innovative transition school seeks to serve out-of-school youths and post-high school leavers between the ages of 13- 19 living in rural and low-income villages in Ikorodu, Lagos, Nigeria. Data collected by Bluvard through Project Digital Rural over the past 3 years reveals that 7 out of every 10 young people in Ikorodu lack basic literacy skills, and while Nigeria has the highest number of out-of-school children, over 60 percent of those who complete secondary school in villages in Ikorodu do not proceed to university due to lack of finance, or poor academic performance.  The major survival trade of the targeted young people is currently factory workers, scavengers, farmers, bricklayers, sales-persons, and petty traders from families living below the poverty line of 2 dollars per day. 

With Lagos ranked as the 4th worst city to live in the world by the Economist Intelligence, Ikorodu is ranked as the 2nd most dangerous place to live in Lagos; a testament to the high rate of unemployment, and limited opportunities for young people leading to an increase in criminal activities. 

The Halfway School is designed to accommodate 500 young people annually, where 50 percent of our graduating students will go into our internship pipeline and get the opportunity to work in corporations, start-ups, and local innovators further reducing unemployment and increasing their employability and enterprise experience.

As a team of five, we all currently live and have spent the majority of our lives in different villages in Ikorodu Lagos Nigeria, hence are confronted daily with the struggles of other young people living below the poverty line due to lack of access to learning opportunities. As the founder of Bluvard Education Initiative, I was raised in the slums of Lagos Nigeria, and access to quality education was a luxury I could not afford. It was this experience that inspired me to set up The Bluvard Education Initiative (www.bluvard.org) in 2021, a non-profit organization where I work to influence policies and create transformative learning interventions for young people from low-income households in hard-to-reach communities in Ikorodu, and across Africa reaching more than 3000 young people in 11 African countries.

As an organization, We have worked closely with over 3000 young people in Ikorodu since 2021 through various interventions such as Project Digital Rural, The Creative Xpress, and Creating a free digital Library in Ikorodu to provide access to digital resources and books to young people in the community. Through these interactions, we have onboarded previous students who now work with the team as interns, volunteers, and part-timers, collecting data and closely designing what an ideal learning space for them would look like. The life skills we intend to promote through the halfway center were inspired by contributions from current and previous learners at Bluvard. 

In addition to these, we have on our team expert board members who provide oversight including Dr. OluwaKemi Olurinola who is an MIT Solve Research Fellow, as well as a senior lecturer of Education Technology at the Olabisi Onabanjo University, as well as Kelsi Kritmaa, the Former Chief of Operations at Philanthropy Advisors among others. 

Before now , we have gone ahead to test the viability of the different life skills we intend to promote at the halfway center in Ikorodu community. We worked closed with similar target groups including out-of-school youths, and post high school leavers to vet the target work our intervention would be most acceptable and relevant to. We have so far tested Digital Inclusion through Project Digital Rural: Project Digital Rural is a digital inclusion project aimed at equipping young people in rural Nigeria with relevant digital and job preparedness skills. This project was mainly targeted at post high school, and out-of-school youths in rural areas of Ikorodu, Nigeria.  Some of the core skills taught at Project Digital Rural include  basic digital literacy, Microsoft proficiency, graphics and product design, software programming, soft skills as well as personalized mentorship.

Current Outcomes :  

Over the last 3 years, we have continually enrolled an average of 300 students annually which has led to over 70 percent employment increase, and an decrease in out-of-school youths among our participants by 40 percent situated in 20 villages in Lagos Nigeria. 

We created The Bluvard Hub   that  currently provides access to digital tools like laptops and access to internet connectivity to over 1000 young people from traditionally marginalized communities in Ikorodu, Lagos annually. Through this center young people from different communities are able to access digital resources and read in a safe quiet environment despite living in the second most dangerous places to live in Lagos Nigeria. 

To enhance leadership skills and independent thinking, we created Leaders of Leaders Africa Fellowship : To build the Africa of our dreams, we have created the Leaders of Leaders Africa Fellowship (The LOLA Fellowship). A new kind of school designed to equip young African ‘dreamers’ and ‘doers’ with the skills they need to become enablers of change in their communities. In the next ten years, our goal of the LOLA Fellowship is to become the largest most effective changemaker fellowship in Africa spearheading change and championing movements for generations to come. 

 Current Outcomes: 

Since the launch of the fellowship, we received over 2300 applications from young people in rural communities, and successfully trained  24 Fellows representing 11 African countries. We also successfully achieved our objective of enlisting diverse facilitators from over 20 countries across the globe. In 3 months, the fellowship improved the knowledge base of our 24 changemakers by over 91.7% which led to a positive structural change in 24 impact driven organizations by 94.1%. Using the trickle down effect, fellows were able to teach members of their communities on various sustainable leadership frameworks reaching 1000 young people in 2023. 

Before now, the bulk of our work at Bluvard has been on designing transformative interventions tailored to meet the needs of our of school youths in rural communities, and after 3 years, we have monitored the data we have been collected through our work , and realized that to become more impactful and do something really innovative,  pivoting into the halfway school to cater to the learning needs of young people without university education who constitute the majority of youths in Ikorodo, would be more relevant to our work. To achieve this, we need to enhance our technical expertise by working with world-class researchers focused on re-imagining education through evidence-based actions. We also need to increase chances of visibility to be able to attain more global partners especially with education-focused institutions through unconventional processes. Moreso, we are looking to fundraise to ensure the systems and structures we create are as qualitative as they are innovative. 

The Halfway School seeks to introduce a new form of education not being practiced in Nigeria ( project-based learning) to a previously ignored sub-set (out-of-school / post-secondary school leavers). Currently, Nigeria operates the 6-3-3-4 System, which means six years in primary school, 3 years in junior high, 3 years in senior high, and 4 years in university. This system is designed to operate as a continuum and assumes that all secondary school students would transition to university, hence 21st-century skills and workplace skills are not taught to students in secondary school. In reality, however, less than 70 percent of high school students end up transitioning to university despite spending 6 years in school specifically being trained to pass the Nigerian University Entrance Exam. By tailoring our initiative to this subset of people we are opening doors of exploratory education, and entering new frontiers of schools as agents of safe transitions to adulthood and career pathways. We also intend to explore how Artificial Intelligence and Virtual Reality can solve the teacher deficit we may face in recruiting talents and teachers in a rural community like Ikorodu. As such, we are also utilizing existing technologies to bridge the educational gap, and advance knowledge. 

Using Project Based Learning, we will be opening up opportunities for young people to learn by doing, and develop real-time transferable skills which will increase their professional and personal leadership experiences.

Activities 1 : Create an innovation learning center for young people who are unable to attain higher education   

Output:  A place where people can learn, explore new ideas, collaborate and acquire soft skills. 

Outcome: Young people will acquire core life, professional and entrepreneurial skills 

Impact: Young People originally from low-income backgrounds become successful innovators,, pacesetters, leaders in their communities

Activity 2: Create Internship opportunities for out-of-school/High school leavers at the Halfway school 

Output: Young people attain practical hands-on professional experiences using the life skills attained at the Halfway School 

Outcome: Youth unemployment reduced among young people in Ikorodu

Activity 3: Providing Counselling and Mentorship to young people with rough childhood experiences 

Output: Young people from rural communities and slums have access to positive mentorship and better mental health solutions

Outcomes: Reduced Inflow of young people to street gangs 

 A Nigeria, starting with Ikorodu, where young people without access to higher education are thriving entrepreneurs, career professionals, creators and innovators

Indicators 

• Number of Students trained annually: The Halfway school aims to reach 1000 young people annually living in rural communities

• Demography of students: Our target is young people between 14- 23 who are extremely financially disadvantaged

•   Number and types of communities reached - We target young people from traditionally marginalized communities with very few/ no government-accredited schools in the village/settlement. 

• Policies influenced through activities carried out at the Halfway school: We look at impact through the lens of how we can influence systems. Through the halfway school, we will address and influence additional policies to focus on project-based learning methods

Impact Goal 2: A Nigeria, starting with Ikorodu where young people without university degrees are not limited by their lack of certifications but by the skills they have acquired. 

Indicators 

• Level of Mindset shift in participants - To change how systems work, we want to change how people think, as such, one of our impact indicators will be the outward transformation of the mindset of the young people we work with. 

• Number of jobs created by alumnus of the halfway school - Our target is to ultimately give young people from low-income backgrounds a better fighting chance by opening them up to employment opportunities, as such having alumni of the project become creators of job opportunities is a metric for measuring impact

• Number of Students able to apply key learnings post the program: An indicator of success is how many students can apply key learnings into their everyday lives, professional careers post their participation in the halfway school. 

At the Halfway school, learning will be powered by Innovation. To achieve this, we intend to leverage Artificial Intelligence tools to make up for the lack of field expert teachers we have in Ikorodu land. A. I will specifically use it to teach students Introduction to Basic Digital Literacy, as well as use it in designing classroom tasks aimed at enhancing the critical thinking, leadership, and problem-solving skills of the students.  We will also be using Virtual Realities to practice public speaking and communication skills in the school. In addition to these, all students are required to have basic digital literacy, as well as master one advanced computer programming language/ design tool (figma or Adobe for creatives) to give them an added advantage. 

2 Full-time 

2 Part-time 

5 Contract Facilitators 

As an organization, We have been working towards this solution for 2 years

The diversity in our team is portrayed in the representations of different genders, religious backgrounds as well as varying levels of experiences at Bluvard. At the board level, we have as our senior Advisor Sanam Kubra from Pakistan, Kelsi Kriitmaa from Switzerland, and Aya Barakat from Lebanon, as well as Dr. Kemi Olorinola from Nigeria among others. At the Operations Level, we have 3 post-high school youths who were previous beneficiaries of Bluvard currently working to support the Operations teams despite not having university certifications. While Bluvard is female-led, we also have males supporting the team in different capacities.  

As a part of our inclusion policy, we have over the years worked with people living with disability both as coaches, student mentors as well as participants in our programs. In our Leadership training for young people, we have had the first female senator living with disability from Kenya (Senator Crystal Asige) as a leadership coach, as well as The Global Disability Advisors in UNICEF as a mentor to one of our students who are visually impaired.

Key Resources- Trainers, Facility, Computers, Funding, 

Key Activities: Create an innovative learning center

Provide mentorship 

Use project based learning to teach digital skills, communications critical thinking, problem solving, entrepreneurship, leadership

Type of Intervention: Workshop formats

Segment : Young people without access to higher university education

Value proposition: Hands-on Skills and Knowledge for career and entrepreneurship pursuit

Partners/ Key stakeholder: Students, Community elders, teachers, philanthropists , donors 

Channels: word of mouth, in-person sessions, community outreaches 

customers value proposition:  Increased opportunities, Increased Career Prospects 

Impact Measures: Number of students reached

Number of Internships created 

Relevance of skills training provided 

Number of communities reached 

Cost structure: Staff, Facility Management, Feeding of students 

Cost surplus: Marketing, 

Revenue:Fundraising avenues, Grants, Registration Fees, Exhibitions

Divest as a Finishing School: One of the ways we intend to raise finance is to request payments from young people from financially buoyant backgrounds looking to take a gap year to acquire life skills and  are able to afford our trainings. Through their payments, we will be able to pay for those from underprivileged backgrounds

Grants and Donations: We are looking to work with Philanthropy organizations that offer long-term unrestricted funding that will allow us invest in ideas developed by our students for profit returns. So far, we have been able to receive funding from The Global Youth Mobilization and The Nigerian Youth Future Funds