The estimated monthly cost of living for a family of four living in Lagos is about ₦2.4 million. For a single person, it is about ₦680k. This amount is exclusive of rent and the cost of dating in Lagos, which, depending on where you live (or your choice of partner), could range from ₦1 million to infinity. Essentially, the average young adult may need an income of ₦800k monthly to maintain a basic standard of living.
In a city like Lagos, surviving is expensive; a stable corporate job is the dream. For Boluwatife Adeleke, her corporate job became a source of anxiety. To her, happiness is as important as survival, so last year, she quit her salaried job to volunteer full-time.
In this article, she talks about the realities of running an NGO in Nigeria, funding community work and why she believes choosing happiness is worth the risk.
Why Did You Decide to Start a Non-profit?
I started to teach nursery school kids when I was 14. In my first class, there was a girl named Olamide* who was popularly known as a dullard amongst the teachers. While children her age were in nursery school, she was still in kindergarten. I had earlier noticed that some children excelled in class but failed assessments, and vice versa. Olamide was neither; she needed extra hours and the kind of patience that the other teachers did not have. She could recite paragraphs by heart, but she found it hard to identify letters or put anything in writing.
I also had learning struggles growing up because I was a timid and anxious child who did not do well in large classes. I realised that the system is not built for children like Olamide and me. I wanted to create a space for us, and in 2024, I made that happen with Thriverise Africa.
What Exactly Does Thriverise Do and How Does it Work?
In summary, Thriverise’s main goal is to promote quality education and economic growth at the grassroots level. We do that by providing free access to basic education to underprivileged and out-of-school children. Then we also provide vocational and informal education to disadvantaged youths.
How Did It Go From Volunteer Work to a Career Option?
Before last year, I’d always seen myself working in the marketing department of some big corporation. Marketing paid my bills, but I was constantly anxious, and I was miserable. I never really considered volunteering for a living because… I mean, who would want to work for free? That was until I realised I was happier doing unpaid work than paid work.
In the end, I discovered that my joy came from helping underprivileged children get access to education. I care deeply about the community that I serve as well as the children and the women I work with. I also care about seeing that the system works for them. What better way to serve them than to turn it into an actual career? So I started researching to see if it was something I could actually pursue full-time. Fortunately, it is.
How Did You Set Thriverse Up?
I wrote to a few of my mentors with similar interests and asked if they would be willing to form the board of trustees. They agreed and signed a contract. My official title is ‘Executive Director’, and even though I’m the founder, I report to the board. Under me, there are positions for a communications lead, an operations lead and a project lead. Under the communications lead, we have positions for a social media manager and a community manager and under the project lead, we have two different project managers. Then we have a director of education and volunteer teachers for the community centers. Up until earlier this year, I was in charge of all these roles. I met a lot of people while volunteering, so I get volunteers by reaching out to qualified people in that network and posting on social media.
Is This Your First Time Running an Organisation?
Not really. An NGO is like a business in a lot of ways, and I’ve always been a business-oriented person. I also believe I have a good head for it. I started my first business venture at 13. I would save my allowance every month and then buy recharge cards to resell. The business failed because the adults around me kept using the cards without paying, so I gave up. A few months later, I found a family friend who was a mobile hair-cream vendor, and I became his assistant. We would leave home early in the morning and drive to whichever part of Lagos we wanted to tour that day. He had one of those cars with a speaker on it, but we did most of the sales on foot. At the end of each day, I would go home with about ₦3,000.
What Did You Get Into After That?
I took a break to write WAEC, and immediately after, I got a teaching job. For ₦7k a month, I was the proprietress’s glorified housemaid. I taught at her school, bathed her kids, made snacks to sell, cleaned her house, ran errands at the market and the bank.
Wow
Yes o. After working for a year, I took a secretarial position at a tutorial centre, and I worked without pay for two months before I quit to return to my teaching job. During COVID, I started a clothing and household items pre-order business, but debtors and shipping delays ruined the business. From there, I moved to affiliate marketing and then content writing before pivoting to ad and operations management. While doing this, I also volunteered for a lot of administrative roles at intervals. I was overworked for most of my late teens up until I was 21.
Self-help books that I read at the time convinced me that it was normal to work this way. I thought that my life would be ruined if I slept for more than five hours. At the end of 2024, I suffered burnout so severe that my body broke down. The best way to describe it is that I began to suffer from mental decline. At some point, I stopped sleeping. If you don’t know how to slow down, one day your body will force you to learn.
Glad To See That You’re Out of There. How Do You Get Funding For Your Non-Profit?
Right now, it’s about 60% self-funded. Our first project was a book drive where we donated books, writing materials and school uniforms to the government primary school in my area. I was still working full-time back then, so the funds came from my pocket. Late last year, we decided to set up a community learning centre. But I had already quit my job. So, I had to pour all my savings into the project to make it happen.
I don’t do public fundraising because I tried it once and I earned the tag of ‘beggar’. Someone even felt bold enough to ask if what I really want to do with my life is to beg for money. I have heard a lot of demeaning things in this line of work. Call it pride if you will, but I don’t want to be known as someone who begs for a living. The other 40% of funds come from grants and donations from people I reach out to. Regardless of the challenges, we’ve reached decent achievement. We’ve gotten approval from the Ministry of Education, we’re an incorporated organisation, and we’ve raised grants of about seven figures in Naira.
How Do You Provide An Income For Yourself
Sometime last year, I quit my 9-5 to focus on the foundation. But since it isn’t established enough to pay salaries yet, I still have to work (the founder must eat, please). Right now, I’m a freelancer. I am currently working on a couple of campaign projects at the moment as an ads manager. But in the end, it is temporary. I would like to work with a non-profit different from mine and actually get paid for it. Probably as a project manager or as a communications manager. Maybe even as a communications manager at UNICEF.
My goal is to influence policies that concern education and youth development and to sit in rooms where these decisions are made. All the choices I make now are creating a path that will lead me to that table.
Do You Need Any Special Skills To Run a Non-profit?
The first thing you need is a healthy dose of stubbornness. If I want something, it would take a supernatural power to stop me from making it happen. The next thing you need is delusion because unpaid work can get very frustrating. Also, people don’t talk about volunteering often enough. I got into social impact by volunteering with a mentor, and it gave me the experience I needed to run my own non-profit. Everything else you need is the same skill set you would need to run any start-up.
Would You Say a University Education is Necessary to Succeed in Your Career Path?
Yes and no. I studied aquaculture and fisheries, but while I see myself owning a farm in the future, I can’t deny that my BSc has been rather useless to my career progression. As much as I’m an education activist, my NGO doesn’t only focus on formal education. We also work to better the earning opportunities of young people. It’s important to understand that not every person needs to learn in the four walls of a classroom. The fact that a person did not go to school does not mean they don’t deserve decent employment. At the same time, my university education exposed me to a lot of mentors, so I can’t really write it off.
How Did the People Around You React to Your New Career Choice?
No African parent will find it easy to accept that their child wants to do charity work for a living.
My family and I had a huge fight when I decided that I was going to start a non-profit and pursue it full-time. My sister told me I was wasting my life, and my mum asked me why I would want to spend the rest of my life training other people’s children. I know they were just very worried about me, because, well, this is Nigeria.
But it is important as a young woman to understand that sometimes, no one knows what’s best for you than yourself.
They expected that I would move out of home after school, get an office job and prepare for my Masters. I have done all these things, just not in the way that they expected. I have a corporate job, but I do it for free, and I really am preparing to do my Masters. But I’m doing it in development practice instead of aquaculture.
What Advice Would You Give Someone Looking to Get Into the Social Impact Sector?
Social impact is a field that doesn’t get a lot of exposure, but there are dozens of opportunities in it that pay well. You don’t have to start your own foundation to work in social impact. There are established non-profits that can afford to pay you to do good work. I’ve applied for a few roles, but I haven’t been able to take any because they all require my physical presence. I can’t step away from my foundation at the moment. From what I’ve seen, the salary offers aren’t bad at all.
On the other hand, if you do not have a source of income, I honestly do not advise starting a non-profit. But if you really want to, you must be very passionate about what you are advocating for. You will not get paid in the early stages. The founder title is ceremonial because the organisation doesn’t belong to you; it belongs to the public. Strangers will hold you accountable, and you will spend your own money like 80% of the time. But (to me, anyway) it is extremely rewarding in so many other ways. Few things compare to watching a child who once struggled to catch up to their peers thrive, knowing you helped make that possible.
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