Meet Chimuanya- Regional Coordinator for Youth Opportunities
Can you tell us about your experience working with young people?
Working with young has been quite a lot, you know young people have tenacity and energy to work, they just want to work and support in their own little way. It has been quite interesting working with young people.
Youth opportunities is a platform where we get to help people who are in need of opportunities and make it accessible to them by using social media as a platform to push that, we have a community, but because I’m a Nigerian I get to manage the Facebook community of Nigeria with other ambassadors, we have about 9000 member, also the growth of the community has been massive.
I joined in two years ago and I’ve been able to increase the number of the media to about 9000 and some members are currently ambassadors for youth opportunities, we are trying to use social media as a tool for accessing opportunities like scholarship, tech, conference and networking event so that everyone can be a beneficiary without them breaking a head.
What can you say are your contribution to the development of youth in this region?
I’m the media lead for REES Africa, I got to use my skill in covering impact stories of REES Africa, REES Africa is a renewal energy company that create renewable source of energy ( solar) made available for marginalized community, so I get to lead that arm of Ris Africa using social media to tell our impact stories and I got to work with other creatives, and also I’ve been able to lead the social media team for Email reaches, it’s a mental health for youth communities where we get to give mental health support for youth, I’ve also used my social media to advocate for climate change before I now moved into tech, I’ve also in my own little way taught people how to make use of social media by optimizing their LinkedIn account and how they can get access to opportunities.
What are things needed/ required of one to access opportunities?
You need to be involved, you need to be accessible and visible, share what you do on social media, if possible focus on one social media platform till it grows, share the things you do on social media, don’t wait for impressions or likes, don’t think people aren’t seeing you because they aren’t liking your post, they are. Keeping putting your best foot out there.
What are the challenges while accessing global opportunities?
Delay, you may experience delay while accessing opportunities also access to resources, use what you have at the moment to learn, don’t wait till you get something big and you can also apply for grants to get funds for the resources needed
Do you think that the opportunities are ubiquitous for every youth in this region to be a beneficiary, if no what do you think should be done for the opportunities to go round among the youth?
You know we have a huge population so it’s normal for opportunity to be scarce and not go round, to be a beneficiary of this opportunity, you need to strategically position yourself even at that you can create opportunities for yourself, for example let’s say you want to venture into tech and you aren’t able to get access to bootcamps, you have access to your phone and the internet, you can search for courses related to what you want to learn, also leverage on communities by connecting with people in that field.
Collaboration is also a key in creating opportunities, this means expert coming together to teach people so that more people can get access to this opportunity.
What skills should one acquire to be able to access global opportunities?
Acquire soft skills, whatever skill you have, you also need to build your soft skill like emotional intelligence skill, innovative skills and leadership skills.
You have to build your soft skills alongside your hard skill and also work on your social skills how you can connect with others.