Country of Residence
Nigeria
Age
18
Project title
Elevated Impact Initiative
Project Summary: Describe your project in one sentence
Elevated Impact Initiative (EII) is a youth-focused platform creating access to the information, opportunities, people, conversations, and spaces young people need to grow, while equipping them to turn that access into meaningful impact and create opportunities for others.
Website URL(s) or social media handles.
https://www.linkedin.com/company/elevated-impact-initiative/
Project Category
My project is an existing project that I started
Project Stage
Pilot-Stage (We’ve tried an activity or two)
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?
The spark for Elevated Impact Initiative came from my own experience of trying to find my way as a young person. As I started building beyond the classroom, I noticed that many young people have the talent and willingness to work, but are limited by what they know, who they know, and the opportunities they can access. I began to see how powerful access can be. Sometimes, the difference between someone who gets an opportunity and someone who misses it is simply hearing about it early enough, meeting the right person, receiving useful guidance, or being invited into a room they did not know existed. My “aha” moment came when I realized that the access I was searching for was probably something other young people were searching for too. I could keep searching for opportunities for myself, or I could build something that helps other young people find them too. That thought became Elevated Impact Initiative. I started EII with a simple belief: creating access is itself a form of impact. We want to connect young people to information, opportunities, people, conversations, and spaces that can help them grow, while encouraging those who receive access to eventually create access for others. What began as a personal realization has become a commitment to help young people dream beyond, get access, and create impact.
The Problem: What problem are you helping to solve? Why does it matter to you and your community?
Many young people have the talent, ambition, and willingness to work, but lack the access needed to turn their potential into progress. The problem is not always that opportunities do not exist. Often, young people simply do not know where to find them, hear about them too late, lack the guidance to pursue them, or do not have the networks that connect them to the right people and spaces. A scholarship, fellowship, internship, mentorship programme, competition, or meaningful conversation can exist, yet remain invisible to the person who needs it most. This creates a gap between potential and possibility. This matters to me because I have experienced the power of access in my own journey. I have seen how one opportunity, conversation, introduction, or piece of information can change someone's direction and expand what they believe is possible. I believe a young person's future should not be limited simply because they lacked access to the right information, people, or opportunities. Elevated Impact Initiative exists to help close this gap by creating pathways to information, opportunities, people, conversations, and spaces that help young people grow and, ultimately, become creators of access for others.
Your Solution: How are you solving this problem? Share your specific solution.
Elevated Impact Initiative (EII) addresses the access gap by connecting young people to the information, opportunities, people, conversations, and spaces they need to grow. We are building this through five interconnected initiatives for a start. Elevated Opportunity Hunt curates scholarships, fellowships, internships, competitions, and other opportunities and makes them easier for young people to discover and pursue. Elevated Conversations creates honest, practical conversations with people who have experience in different fields, giving young people knowledge, perspective, and guidance they can apply. Elevated Stories shares real journeys, challenges, failures, and breakthroughs, helping young people see possibilities beyond their immediate environment. Elevated Access connects young people to people, communities, and spaces that can expand their networks and open new possibilities. The 1% Project encourages young people to create small acts of impact, showing that meaningful change can begin with something as simple as sharing knowledge, making an introduction, or helping someone access an opportunity. Together, these initiatives create a cycle: young people discover access, use it to grow, and eventually create access for others. We are starting with a community-led model using digital platforms, partnerships, conversations, storytelling, and opportunity curation. As we grow, we will build partnerships that expand the opportunities and resources available to our community. Our goal is not simply to tell young people that opportunities exist. It is to make access more visible, practical, and actionable.
Impact: How has your project created impact / made a difference so far? Or, if at an early stage, what will impact look like?
Elevated Impact Initiative is at an early stage, but we have already built a community around the problem we are trying to solve. Our LinkedIn community has grown to over 200 followers, while our WhatsApp community has also grown to over 200 members. We have developed five initiatives, begun assembling a team, and are now moving into the implementation of our first programmes. We will measure our impact through both numbers and stories: how many young people we reach, opportunities they discover, conversations they participate in, connections they make, and actions they take because of the access EII provides. But the numbers are only part of the story. We want to see a student discover an opportunity they would otherwise have missed, a young person connect with someone who changes their direction, or someone gain the confidence and information to enter a new space. Most importantly, we want the impact to multiply. A young person who receives access through EII should eventually be able to create access for someone else. Our long-term measure of success is not simply how many people we reach, but how many people become capable of opening doors for others.
Your Innovation: What is different about your project compared to other programs or solutions already out there? How is your project new or innovative?
EII is not built on the idea that we are the first people to share opportunities, host conversations, tell stories, or connect young people to mentors. These things already exist. Our innovation is in bringing them together around one central problem: access. Many existing programmes address one part of a young person's journey. One platform shares opportunities. Another hosts events. Another provides mentorship or storytelling. EII connects these different forms of access so that they reinforce one another. A young person might first discover an opportunity through Elevated Opportunity Hunt, gain practical insight through Elevated Conversations, learn from someone's journey through Elevated Stories, and then gain a new connection or enter a new space through Elevated Access. The 1% Project then encourages that person to use what they have gained to create value for someone else. This creates a cycle rather than a one-time intervention: Access → Growth → Contribution → More Access. We are also building EII as a community-led platform rather than simply delivering programmes to young people. Our digital community allows information, opportunities, experiences, and connections to move continuously between members. Most importantly, we are treating access as something that should multiply. The goal is not to create a community of people who are permanently waiting to be helped. We want to develop people who become connectors, mentors, opportunity-sharers, and door-openers themselves. In this way, EII combines existing tools and approaches into a model designed for a specific challenge: helping young people who have potential but lack proximity to the information, networks, and spaces that can help them act on it.
How many people are on your team?
20
Your team: What role(s) do your team members play? How do you share leadership with them?
EII is being built by a multidisciplinary team covering administration, programmes, research, partnerships, finance, human resource, design, events, community management and content. As Founder, I provide overall direction, while executive leads own their respective areas and make decisions within their responsibilities. We share leadership through collaboration, delegated ownership and regular coordination, allowing different team members to shape EII rather than making it dependent one person.
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.
Over the next year, our goal is to move EII from an emerging initiative into a functioning platform that creates meaningful access for young people. Our immediate priority is to launch our five core initiatives: Elevated Stories, Elevated Conversations, Elevated Opportunity Hunt, Elevated Access, and The 1% Project. We will use these programmes to test our model, gather feedback, and improve our approach. We will complete our executive team, clarify responsibilities, and establish simple systems for programme delivery, communication, community management, and accountability. We will grow our existing community of over 200 LinkedIn followers and over 200 WhatsApp members by consistently providing useful opportunities, conversations, stories, and resources. We will also build partnerships with universities, student organizations, professionals, companies, NGOs, and youth-focused initiatives to expand the opportunities and networks available to our community. Finally, we will track participation, opportunities accessed, connections created, and stories of change. This will help us measure what works, strengthen our programmes, and build a sustainable model that can reach more young people. Our goal is to turn access into a cycle: helping young people grow, then empowering them to create access for others.
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 have been building EII publicly from the beginning, using my platforms to introduce the problem, share our vision, and invite young people to become part of what we are building. So far, our LinkedIn community has grown to over 200 followers, while our WhatsApp community has over 200 members. People have joined our community, engaged with our conversations, shared opportunities, and expressed interest in contributing. I am also assembling a team of young people who are taking ownership of different areas, including programmes, research, partnerships, design, events, community management, and content. I do not want EII to depend entirely on its founder. I want people to have room to lead, contribute ideas, and create impact themselves. As our five initiatives move into implementation, we will activate our community through conversations, storytelling, opportunity curation, events, partnerships, and The 1% Project. Our goal is to move people from learning about the access gap to doing something about it. Someone might share an opportunity, make an introduction, tell their story, or help another young person enter a space they could not access alone. Ultimately, I want people who encounter EII to see themselves not just as beneficiaries, but as people capable of creating access for others.
