One month after participating in the Goodwill Fellowship organized by Youths Inspiration, which was focused on ethical leadership and social entrepreneurship, Team Smart took up the responsibility to give back to their community all they had learned, through an onsite pass-it-on event, at the Open Dreams Center Yaounde. Their main aim was to impact over twenty youths with knowledge and skills with respect to Personal and Professional Development, Design Thinking, using Social media to solve societal problems, Community Engagement, and how to become Antifragile.
On October 22nd, 2022, Team Smart with members: Ndeh Blessing, Akisarl Lynn-Everdene , Vershiyi Lawrence, Tomoh Claude, and Berinyuy Vanessa, organized a pass-it-on event. This event, which had a total of 19 partipants, was partly sponsored by Bill Agha, who was a guest speaker and special invitee.
It started at 11 a.m. with the first presentation of the day on Antifragility by Akisarl Lynn, who also served as the MC. She laid emphasis on the fact that things that are anti-fragile get better because of failure. Taking an example of the hydra, which is known for its regeneration after it has been cut, we can also grow after experiencing life’s challenges, in the opinion of Lynn.
The next topic was Leveraging on Technology/Social media to solve societal problems, presented by Lawrence Vershiyi. He expounded on the influence of technology in reducing societal problems, stating how social media goes beyond its entertaining features and thus should be used for the benefit of the community at large.
There were educational and fun games in between presentations to engage the
participants and to lay emphasis on the importance of teamwork as they got to know one another's strengths and weaknesses, which are the basis to effective team building.
Pushing through with the event, we had a presentation, by Vanessa Berinyuy on Personal and Professional Development. Her spotlight was on the importance of knowing your "Raison d'etre", as this is one way to create enormous impact. Also, she reiterated the fact that it is never too late to start working on yourself so as to reach your optimum potential. After this, participants were given the time to network and get to know each other better.
Then after came a mind-blowing presentation by our guest speaker, Bill Agha who spoke on the 21st century Leadership toolkit and Community Engagement. He effectively summarized a whole course in roughly two hours. He threw more light on the importance of keeping the end in mind while beginning, and how purpose brings about sustainability.
The next was a presentation focused on Design Thinking by Blessing Ndeh. Her key focus was on how to provide all participants with a standardized innovation process to develop creative solutions to problems—design-related or not. The last presentation was done by Claude Tomoh, which was on team building. During the presentation, participants had as a task the creation of a tall and robust tower with the materials
they had on their tables, in addition to A4 sheets to enhance their creativity while improving their problem-solving skills.
Bill Agha, our guest speaker who gave it up for all the participants and the organizers, rounded off the event after awarding certificates to participants. Following the awards, we stepped out for a panoply of snapshots with Ateh Frank behind the camera. During the event, we shared sticky notes which were a means of keeping records of participants' immediate feedback. Over 30 notes were collected which were all positive, with a few that read, "Content was deep and presenters had a mastery of the subject," and "I have gained a better insight into becoming a better and more productive version of myself. I can’t wait to begin implementing these skill sets and to actualize a ton of goals!".
- Team Smart.