Time to be Frugal
(By Olubodun Akinyele, 2019 kanthari)
As I boarded the plane from Trivandrum airport last December, I was filled with mixed feelings. I was not only leaving my Kerala friends behind, but I would also see my new global network of social change makers travel to their different abodes to change communities in different continents. It was the end of a 7-month intensive training and we were all ready to lend our voices to what CHANGE should be.
My organisation “AYITI”, a hike from Access to Initiation, identifies vulnerable children from the margins of society. We teach them computer programming for ethical change; followed by a five-year mentorship.
Programming opened doors for me, enabling me to step out of poverty. I grew up in a family with three siblings. We all lived in a one room apartment, in a dangerous neighbourhood. The entire house comprised of 15 families all cramped into their individual one-room-apartments with an average of 2 children. All the families shared the same kitchen, toilet and bathroom. The street was (and still is) a hotbed of drugs, alcohol, cultism, robbery, and social vices. I grew up with many of my friends being killed by either police or jungle justice because of robbery or gang war. Waking up to a new day was a nightmare, and seeing the sun set and the night approaching was an even bigger fear. Injustice thrives in my community and hardly a day goes by without a fight or the sound of a gunshot. I wondered what I have done to deserve this. I never reacted, I instead concealed it. “I hate being in Bariga”, I told myself. I remembered a case of a cab driver that was set ablaze in broad day light and later died in the hospital. All he did was protest his right on a queue to buy fuel. The perpetrator of the crime walks the streets free to this day. All I saw around me was evil and violence, but I believed there was something better than crime and gangs. I chose as a young child to have a better life, but my options were limited; I could not see beyond my neighbourhood.
Then… I stumbled over programming and got hooked.
A lot of my friends did not understand what I got in to. I didn’t know either, but I loved the fact that I could do something engaging and interesting with my time. Day after day, I spent my food allowance on internet cafés to practice coding; my parents couldn’t afford to buy me a computer. This kept me away from the “friends” who were into drugs and crime.
Today, after having received awards for programming and enjoying a good career, I believe my journey to freedom can be replicated by other children living in extreme poverty. We just need to lower the barrier to attain programming knowledge. This would help to reduce crime rate in children and their involvement in social vices, while also contributing to the social good. I want to create a community of young social visionaries equipped with the power of technology to change their society and the world. And this brought me to kanthari and back to Nigeria where my organisation AYITI should have picked up speed in 2020.
This was the plan: a 52 weekends curriculum in 5 algorithmic steps:
A = Get Access to the world of programming
Y = Youthfulness (let’s go wild)
I = Intellectuality (reflect, analyse, and resolve issues)
T = Technology (software + hardware + mentorship)
I = Initiate (Dream factory, prototyping, Investing and Pitching)
In the beginning of this year, I had so much on my plate as I was trying to settle in my new/old reality: identifying my beneficiaries and seeking support through my newly crafted fundraising strategies.
Additionally, my family was getting used to our re-union. I had to constantly convince my 5 years old child that I would not be traveling for a long period anytime again.
And then, the pandemic struck, locking us into the confines of our rooms. No one knew when it will be over or when life will return to normal again.
We are living in an interesting time; a time in which the whole world is pausing due to a disease that is threatening everyone’s existence.
Schools were forced to close, religious activities on hold, airplanes grounded, environmentalists rejoice with nature, and several industries now need to re-think, re-evaluate, and re-strategize what survival implies for their businesses during and after a “global lockdown”.
This period has changed everything for me: I read a lot and I realized that pandemics and natural disaster are parts of life which the world needs to make provision for.
For me, it is family time – a time to reflect, plan and pause from the fast-paced movement of existence. During this period, I got the time to teach my child mathematics and I programmed a mathematical game for him to be able to learn better. It makes me feel like a superhero.
Hold on! Does this mean my change project will have to wait? Does this mean the children to whom I have talked and interviewed will have to kill their excitement of becoming a programmer in 52 weeks? Does this mean I have to keep donors’ funds in the bank and keep writing reports of no activities? No, this is a period to reflect more about AYITI and what life is all about.
And it is indeed a time to find new ways to make impact in the lives of these vulnerable and marginalized children even if the world has to stop breathing.
It’s time to become frugal. There is a need to spark the light in these children and into our dreams of social change again by implementing frugal inventions. I have been thinking of different options to reach my beneficiaries. These are children from a background of extreme poverty, some of whom do not have parents. What can learning mean to them? What will learning computer programming be like without the option of a computer to practice because their parent cannot afford one? What about the lack of internet or even someone to answer the questions that come up?
Evaluating our different options, we considered the possibility of using smart phones (Android) since they are low cost, portable and accessible. Many of these parents cannot afford food so it is almost certain they do not have a smart phone. Our plan is to get second-hand phones, install an offline app that runs code, and periodically deliver short teaching videos through Bluetooth. With this they will be able to explore the world of programming. Once a week, we will call them to understand their progress, discuss any questions they have, and receive feedback which will be used to improve the quality of our video classes. We cannot quantify how far this will go but with feedback and reiteration, we might be able to set up a new way of learning.
Life will not remain the same. According to Newton’s Law of motion, “Every object in a state of uniform motion will remain in that state of motion unless an external force acts on it.” Well, an external force has acted on the ever-moving human race, grinding our activities to a halt and forcing us to reflect. We need to learn to not just exist… but to live. If there is any better time to redefine what humanity and existence mean, it is NOW!
More info about Olubodun’s work is available at http://ayiti.ngo/