Country of Residence
Nigeria
Age
19
Project title
The Daisies Initiative:
Project Summary: Describe your project in one sentence
The Daisies Initiative is a platform dedicated to helping young people discover and communicate their ideas with clarity and purpose. As part of the initiative, we host virtual programmes and workshops intentionally designed for young people between the ages of 15 and 19. We hope each experience leaves them with a version of themselves that is more confident communicators, more intentional, and more thoughtful in whatever path they choose.
Website URL(s) or social media handles.
https://www.instagram.com/the.daisies.initiative
Project Category
My project is an existing project that I started
Project Stage
Scaling (We’re expanding impact to new locations or in new and innovative ways)
Founding Story: What was the spark that led you to start your project? What was the "Aha!" moment that led you to get started and see the potential for this to succeed?
I feel it all began after I spoke at a workshop and was going through the guide I created for the attendees. In my guide, I spoke about how writing is essential to literally everyone in their own space and how talents alone isn't enough to represent our ideas. We need to learn how to communicate it properly for the right people to notice it. Somewhere along the line, I began researching more for myself, how to communicate my ideas. Then I just decided to create an initiative and titled our first programme, The Art of Being Understood. Prior to this, I had no experience at organising programmes so I knew it was time to implement all I have learnt as well. I definitely can't call it my best but I was so proud of what my team and I pulled up at the end. The participants (ambitious teenagers like me) also made it so worth it. Looking back, I can say, for now, the best decision of my life was starting my initiative.
The Problem: What problem are you helping to solve? Why does it matter to you and your community?
For our first cohort, we received positive feedback from the participants on how they have learnt better, how to communicate their ideas and they are already implementing it. That means so much to us. We hope to organise annual programmes, designed around different problems facing youths, especially in the 21st Century. For example, the shame adults attribute to sex (yes. Because sex education is really important. I hope to help any child with childhood trauma from molestation in my own way), depression (which is common among adolescents), content creation, marketing, psychology, choosing a career... My team and I are so passionate about helping teens like us and so this really drives us to scale up the initiative.
Your Solution: How are you solving this problem? Share your specific solution.
Typically, we organise live sessions, invite profound speakers, host a workshop, networking opportunities and share tips on how to grow, using writing as a core tool to communicate, as a teenager (on our social media) It makes a difference and I have seen it in the 40 students who trusted our first ever cohort and left with real results. One of the participants now has her own community, four of them taking up leadership roles and the rest are also implementing what they've learnt. One thing that made me really happy with the first cohort was the fact many of our participants told us we left them better than we met them, we helped them identify their problems and explore their abilities and it is something that always makes us proud.
Impact: How has your project created impact / made a difference so far? Or, if at an early stage, what will impact look like?
I am a teenager who observed a lot and whenever I have a problem and I find out the solution, I wish more people knew about it. Currently, I have built a community of 30+ active daisies in my initiative and we all encourage one another to make the most of our teenage years. Even my team and I, we're all teenagers. We didn't have sponsors. We had zero experience at community building... So you can imagine how hectic it must have been for us to organise something like that. We made mistakes, sure. But we learnt from them. I personally went through series of depression, burnout, self doubt... But when I saw the messages from the participants expressing how this initiative has helped them, it genuinely made me tear up. And again, I told myself, this was so worth it. And next year, I hope we do better than our expectations.
Your Innovation: What is different about your project compared to other programs or solutions already out there? How is your project new or innovative?
I see a lot of youth led initiatives, which is great, but I also see something missing in most of it. Most initiatives I have been a part of are full of theoretical aspects of growth but we need to see the practical aspects as well. For our workshop, I made sure we tailored the activities in such a way, the participants implemented what they learnt immediately and expressed what the experience taught them. I also participated in some of this by myself and it was so beautiful. It brought together a feeling of togetherness. Another thing is that we are all a group of teenagers trying to navigate the experiences together. I really wish I don't age anymore so I can forever feel included in the initiative like I felt the first time. Nevertheless, I am confident in this initiative because we intentionally tailor our activities to the needs and convenience of our participants.
How many people are on your team?
4
Your team: What role(s) do your team members play? How do you share leadership with them?
I have a cohort support officer, two moderators and myself as the founder. I wish we were bigger than that but I couldn't get a lot of people on my team. I didn't have much friends to do this with and organising this initiative actually helped me grow and it opened my eyes to issues I ordinarily wouldn't notice about myself. I am in charge of planning how the entirety cohort would go and they rub minds with me and we all execute together.
What’s Next: What are the next steps you plan to take to grow or strengthen your project over the next year? If your project is still in the idea stage, describe the steps you will take over the next three months to launch or begin developing it.
I wish this initiative had more visibility and that's why I took it upon myself to learn content creation properly. I have started planning for our next cohort and a few actionable plans I have against next year would be: - getting brand sponsorships at least five months before the D-day (I am already learning how to get sponsors for NGOs) - building a home (a website for all our activities, putting out a call for ambassadors to preach the gospel just like Ashoka is doing, calling volunteers to join our team e.t.c) - bringing the best students from our first cohort in as part of the team and organising a training for all of us. - Expand our activity, have a physical hangout for our networking session, get global recognition...
How do you encourage other people to join your project or learn about the problem you’re working on? If you have a new idea, tell us how you will do this in the future.
I am a talented writer and I know how to really use words to persuade people. I got a lot of people to create awareness about the initiative and it really paid off. I basically have a lot of teenagers in my circle and I always want to create a safe place for everyone. So far, I have engaged about 70 teenagers in my space, virtually and we got 3000 eyes on our IG past last month which means people know about us. The rest is, how to make them stay which I decided to learn throughout my vacation from school and pretty much, everything really boils down to psychology and understanding humans so they see the problem we want to help them solve
