There is a growing concern that there is poverty everywhere in the world, and especially in Africa. We have all heard from the media, non-profit development organizations, our neighbours, the Government, public and private organization how poor we are in Africa.

But, are we really poor? Is poverty just about the inability to live above $1 per day? Does poverty also cover someone with enough food, good shelter, and clothes, but can’t lead others, isn’t empathetic and can’t translate knowledge into action?

What if we begin to look at individuals and communities everywhere with a new eye?

What if we begin to zoom in on the strengths, talent, ingenuity and gifts that they possess?

What if we stop funding what our community lack, need or that is broken, but empower them to see that they have huge resources to drive their own development?

Wouldn’t it be more practicable to build wealth, end poverty and sustain social solutions?

Prikkle Academy works on all the ‘what ifs’ above, turning them into ‘why not, it works’. We are tired of hearing about all the negativity in the world, we are convinced that ‘what we have in our hands as individual and as a nation is plenty’, and if we effectively manage our resources, we can transform them into desired solutions.

In Afon Community, close to the Ilorin, the Capital City of Kwara State in Nigeria, Prikkle Academy has been engaging with a dozen of young passionate individuals for the past 2 months on empowering them to translate the education in their head into series of social solutions for their community.

After walking together through our intensive asset inventory training, an aspect of Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD), we recently began mobilizing the gifts, resources and talents of these youths to design a new vision of education in the community that will nurture creativity and innovation.

In a single week, several solutions to household and community problems have been recorded in our booklets. But, we decided to take action on each of them one after the other. Here are just 2 out of our recent solutions.

• Recycled Tyres.

What if we don’t have to cut down all the tress in our forest to make all those executive chairs? What if we can easily transform the huge ‘waste’ of tyres in our community into treasured chairs, toys and learning resources, tourist attraction and so on?

So, we went back to our list of “Waste: useful things in our homes and communities” and we began to flesh out the amazing things that we can do with it. The picture above is just one out of the many solutions that we are creating with tyres.

One of our participants, Balogun Abubakar, is already exploring the design of more executive chairs out of milk can always thrown away after use.

• Kitchen Waste.

What if any unfinished food and kitchen wastes can become happiness for the farmers and soon, new jobs for community youths? What if we can slash down by half the huge global food waste by using Do-It-Yourself techniques of preserving or converting into useful forms?

Prikkle Academy training has triggered one of our participants, Adam Abdulraheem, to try out converting the kitchen waste in his house into organic manure, to spread in his vegetable farm, live healthy lives and helping the mother earth to be happy.

With all locally sourced equipment, he gathers egg shells, to banana peels, to left over foods and so on, into his bucket and allows nature to dance around it for a few weeks. Voila, the organic manure is made.

In conclusion: There are many possibilities within your house, community, and nation, you just need to look a little bit more closely and start taking action to solve the problems you desire.

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