CrystalBell Omuboye is the first child of 6 children with both parents unemployed. Early in her life, while she had learned to make and sell liquid soap to provide for herself, the money she made from it was barely sufficient to make ends meet. Determined to change the trajectory of her life, Crystalbell enrolled in the Ingressive For Good’s Technical Training program as an escape from the grossly inadequate system she was battling with. The program provided her the tools and learning resources to transition into a full stack developer. She recently landed a developer job and now earns 10x what she earned before. Her life has completely changed.
Crystabell’s story is just one out of over 60, 000 youths that Ingressive For Good has trained in tech since its formation one year ago. Founded by Maya Horgan Famodu and Sean Burrowes in 2020, Ingressive For Good(I4G) is a tech non-profit foundation tackling unemployment in Africa by equipping young people with tech skills and resources to help them find opportunities and grow their earning power. The foundation aims to achieve this through three pillars: Micro-scholarships, Technical training and Talent placements.
Through Micro-scholarship, I4G awards scholarships and laptops to students with financial needs studying computer science at prestigious African universities. These students are also connected to mentors and tech jobs thereby driving resources to those with the highest impact potential, strengthening the overall African technical talent development pipeline, and supporting the monetization of tech skills that can create local and global opportunities.
Similar to the micro-scholarship, the technical training is a non-academic scholarship in partnership with global trainers like HNG, Facebook, Enye, Coursera, Datacamp etc, to provide youths with digital tech skills in the areas of programming and design (tech). The Talent Placement pillar of the foundation’s mission ensures youths within its network who have accessed one or more of its programs are job-ready and connected to opportunities.
According to its mission, I4G aims to empower one million African youths, provide 5000 jobs and award $1m in scholarship in 5 years across the continent. To achieve this, the foundation works with training organizations to develop learning modules that support the growth of its community members. By liaising with recruiters, HR staff, and tech companies to present talents to the job market, I4G provides a full circle process that identifies the best of the best and places them in jobs while empowering the rest with skills to secure jobs, explore freelancing or start thriving businesses.
“We learned that training for training’s sake is neither engaging nor sustainable when people have real needs today. African youth can’t eat online course links or spend certificates” – Sean Burrowes, Cofounder and COO, Ingressive For Good
So far, Ingressive For Good has recorded significant impact in its strides to connect African talents to opportunities. The foundation has recorded top participation in countries like Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, Tanzania, Cameroon, South Africa, Uganda, Rwanda, Botswana and Benin. It has trained 66,570 African youths, awarded more than $42,600 in scholarships and placed qualified candidates in more than 300 tech jobs.
The foundation recently released its Impact Report brochure which shows that it has received international students from 79 countries outside the continent including Africans in the US and the UK. All these growths haven’t come without challenges. As it is with foundations like I4G that require lots of capital for its operations, funding has been a big challenge.
The biggest challenge faced by I4G so far is definitely funding. When we came together to start the company in April with the founding team, we had zero dollars. We didn’t even have a bank account, not one donor. The foundation also struggled with people not being able to differentiate it from the $10m Venture Capital fund, Ingressive Capital that invests in early-stage tech startups –
Blessing Abeng, Cofounder and Director of Communication, I4G
In achieving its audacious goals, the foundation has benefited immensely from the experience of its leadership and operations team – Sean Burrowes (Co-founder &COO), Blessing Abeng (Co-founder & Director of Communications), Bolatito Akanbi (Head of Design & Program Coordinator), and Haneefah Abdurrahman (Program Coordinator) all of whom have played pivotal roles in carrying the flame of the foundation’s mission. Haneefah and Bolatito coordinate and manage the foundation’s programs and over 80,000 community members. Sean Burrowes and Blessing Abeng have been responsible for driving key partnership and program development. One of such is the $1.8m worth of licenses for 5000 Africans the foundation got from Coursera during the pandemic.
Asides from the foundation’s ambitious five-year plan to train 1 million youths with tech skills, disburse $1 million in micro-scholarships, and place at least 5000 of its trained youths in jobs, I4G also aims to be a go-to resource for key insights and data on human tech resource in Africa, leveraging its expansive work and research in the space.
To support I4G on this journey, donors can send an email to donor@ingressive.org or visit the Ingressive For Good website to learn more. You can also download the Ingressive Impact Report to learn more about how the foundation is changing lives.
