My friends and I made a local community rich without knowing it.
A short story on how I learned the true meaning of social impact
The atmosphere in the boardroom was tense and filled with stares; everyone was curious as to why I called for an impromptu meeting. Beside me was Tolu, who was full of energy, waiting for the room to be filled so she could let out her anger in the long-awaited discussion.
It had been over a year since our team first visited a community in Joju Ota, Ogun state. On one of our early visits there, we were welcomed with so much warmth and love that it felt like we had known them for many years. We went there with music, foodstuff, and a proposition the community leaders couldn’t resist. The young men and women were impressed with our offer, and the children danced around with excitement to the beats coming out of our speakers. Their young minds were blown away at the sight of our drones flying around and taking their pictures. It was certainly an experience they would not forget quickly.
For a community that was initially indifferent about the problem we came to solve, they were quick to accept our solution, given the incentives that came with it. For us, it was a done deal. We were well underway to impact people’s lives positively and hopefully raise their standard of living. We were optimistic, though naive, about the future of our enterprise. But as every young person eventually learns, a plan built on optimism alone is bound to fail woefully.
We had promised that community so much and raised their hopes to the sky. But after a few months of “empowering” them with the dream we sold to them, we vanished into thin air, leaving no traces.
I zoned out of my thoughts, looked at the room, and realized everyone was now seated. Before I said a word, I looked at Tolu. The guilt of abandoning that community after getting what we wanted from them had almost torn her apart.
She relentlessly reminded me about the issue time and time again until I decided that it was time to talk about it. So we gathered the team to discuss it. In our minds, we were making progress. I mean, we were already discussing it as a team. What could go wrong?
Little did I know that it would take another 2 months before we would finally go down there to repair the broken relationship with the people of that community. A lot happened between those two months. In that boardroom, we were naive, energetic, and optimistic undergraduates with little or no experience in the corporate world. But after those two months, we learned a painful but powerful lesson about life.
It was the summer of 2019; we had just ended what was, at that time, the longest semester ever at Covenant University (CU). Everyone was excited to take the much-needed break from school to relax and have fun. However, many of us decided to stay back on campus for a boot camp organized by the Enactus student association of our school. (Enactus is a global nonprofit that trains students to become social entrepreneurs.) During this boot camp, we worked on community development projects that we aimed to turn into sustainable enterprises.
Part of the Enactus program is a National competition where students from different schools compete to determine whose project had the most impact on people’s lives and economic results within the year. This competition was a highlight of the Enactus student program that ran yearly. So, we were working tirelessly building our projects to present them at the competition and hopefully emerge as the national champions.
The previous year, we emerged in 2nd place at the national competition for the second year in a row. That year we presented our project that was focused on collecting poorly managed plastic waste from the environment and recycling them.
As part of the project, we visited a community in Joju that had so much plastic waste lying around that it seemed like a part of the ground there. We offered them cash and food items as incentives to supply us with all the plastic waste in their environment. This beautiful arrangement was short-lived. We had created the exchange system on top of borrowed resources and an unsustainable model. So, after a few successful trips to pick up plastic waste from the community, we lost access to the garbage truck, and our pockets ran out of cash to pay the community members the incentives to gather the plastic waste for us. We had hoped that our venture would be profitable within a short period of time, but it turned out to be the opposite. Hence, we couldn’t afford to continue the money-making system we had introduced this community to.
Sadly, rather than communicating this with them, we vanished.
Everyone on the team was gathered in the board room again. This time it was in celebration. We had just won the Enactus Nigeria national competition. We were all elated, and it felt like an unending flow of joy from the Victoria Island competition venue to our school in Ota Ogun state. Days passed, and as our energy levels started to reduce back to normal levels, the question “What next” was in everyone’s mouths. We had successfully climbed one mountain, only to realize an even greater one was in front of us, preparing for the international competition.
Unfortunately for us, climbing this great mountain forced us to revisit a chapter of our lives we thought we had closed. The chapter that involves that beloved community.
Now, it had been two months since we had that first meeting in the boardroom. We gained national and international recognition by winning the Enactus national competition with our project that focuses on creating interlocking pavement stones from plastic waste. Our next line of action was to use our project to increase the positive impact we had on our surrounding communities by providing them with incentives in exchange for the plastic waste that we would use to create our product.
But the problem with this step was that we already had a community where we had tried this system before, and it failed. Going to a new community to try to replicate a faulty model was not our best bet. We believed that our only path to success was to retrace our steps, reconcile with the old community and devise a new system that works for both parties and that leaves no one behind.
Tolu and I were especially excited that the team would finally make amends with the local community it had abandoned for over a year. Two members of the team and I paid them a visit to re-establish communication with them. It was a quiet and strategic visit as we only went to a few houses where we were sure they would remember us. On getting there, we noticed something unusual; almost every house there had huge sacks filled with plastic waste in front of it. It was as if they knew we were coming. But that was impossible because we came in unannounced. How could they have known?
We met with the daughter of one of the community leaders. We introduced ourselves and stated our agenda for reactivating our partnership with the community.
She smirked and then said,
“Look at those sacks filled with plastic over there. Those are over 10 kilograms in weight which is just about 2 weeks’ worth of supply. We have recycling companies we sell our plastics, and almost every family here is a part of the business. If you want to collect plastic waste from us, you must become one of our customers, and we will sell to you at our preferred rate.”
Not only was I astonished at the level of coordination of this community’s business, but also the fact that we had gone from trying to show them the value in their plastic waste to becoming a client out of many on their list.
Then I realized that our actions had opened their eyes to a lucrative opportunity that they did not hesitate to capitalize on to build their own system. The experience taught me that the term “social Impact,” which is thrown around so easily today, is not just about providing people with things they lack or supporting them to escape marginalization and discrimination, but it is also about influencing people’s lifestyles and opening minds to the different possibilities within their reach. After that, you just sit back and watch human nature take over.
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