iLEAD Fellowship

In a world of limited opportunities for girls, Josephine is pushing her way through life’s
hurdles to give herself and family a better life.
Never having the luxury of options to choose what she ate; Josephine grew up with a lot of doubts about
life. Accepting life as it comes, after losing their dad to the cold hands of death, she and her other siblings
are experiencing life’s hard blows. Josephine was frequently absent from school due to lack of funds for 7
years because as her dad usually came down with crises and the limited funds in the family was
channelled to make him back on his feet. She does not know what it feels like to wake up to see a man in
the house as her dad was always ill. Her mother, on the other hand, had sold every one of their valuables
to just to save her husband – but he eventually died of cancer.

After the death of her father, her mother then became the breadwinner of the family. Even though they
seem not to have anything, Josephine looks up to her siblings and mother – They are all she has. Being
emotionally bruised by the realities of her father’s absence, she is usually uncomfortably shy whenever
she is among friends and they converse about their fathers. She has low self-esteem and could not fully
concentrate on academic activities.

Despite the numerous challenges facing Josephine and her sisters, she draws a lot of inspiration from her
hardworking mother. Mrs David is a petty trader who trades in brassier in the central market in
Eket, South East of Akwa-Ibom State to support her five children.
Josephine aspires to become a lawyer one day, but her dream is constantly threatened by the numerous
challenges she daily experiences, chief of which is how to go through the day without being hungry. As a
routine, she supports her mother in the market to hawk in order to increase sales for her and her siblings
to feed.

Even out of the odds, Josephine is keeping hope alive, nursing her dream of becoming a Lawyer and
finding innovative alternatives to support herself financially. With the introduction of the iLEAD
Fellowship into their school by LEAP Africa, Josephine’s dream is becoming a reality before her eyes.
Before her interaction with the iLEAD Fellowship as a student beneficiary, she lacked the necessary
intrinsic motivation and technical support to actualize her dream. But with modules on entrepreneurship
and enterprise, self-identity, self-confidence, leadership, Josephine has found the solution to bringing her
family out of abject poverty. With the skills and competencies gained from the iLEAD classes, she is
using her mother’s business as an experiment to test some of the principles of entrepreneurship being
taught in the programme. The results she is getting is from helping her mother is jaw-dropping. There has
been a significant increase in sales and a consistent influx of customers.

Josephine is beginning to consider entrepreneurship as a viable alternative to support her education and
dreams of becoming a Lawyer in the future. When asked what changes Mrs David has noticed in
her child, with unrestrained excitement, she replied “Esther na my husband now o. I don’t feel like I have
lost my husband. She dey make my brassier business move well well with the tin wey dem dey teach am
for the iLEAD programme. iLEAD Thank you o!”

Links:

• LEAP Africa official website