Thank you for stopping by. As the founder of SOCASEMP INITIATIVE, I’d like to briefly share the inspiration behind it with you. I hope you are inspired.
Meet the founder
My name is Eunice Okoh. I am a Humanitarian, a Youth Empowerment Coach and Mentor, a Business Advisor, and a Project Team Lead.
My work is simple: I help people, especially young adults, navigate life and discover their strength. In turn, they come into their authentic alignment and become who they were truly meant to be.
I also help aspiring entrepreneurs turn what is in their head into what is in their hands. Together, we work on practical business ideas, product and service development, launches and startup guidance. In addition, I offer strategic advisory support, holding their hand through building, launching and growing.
Over the years, I have led teams to deliver impactful community and business projects. But strip it all away, and I am simply a woman with a burning desire to see people rise into their best selves.
It is said that we are who we are because of where we are from. Hence, my life’s experiences and journey inspired the birth of SOCASEMP INITIATIVE in 2013. It officially began in 2014 as a pet project, and we incorporated it 3 years later.
The pain behind the vision
Since childhood, I have loved the world of arts. Equally, I have been drawn to the inexhaustible skills, talents and potential we see every day in people, especially young people in Nigeria.
But I also know the other side of that beauty.
I know what it is to go through hell and high waters. It means carrying big dreams with no one to support you. It also means having a powerful skill, talent or potential, with little to no resource to express it.
Deeply creative, I have always been a bank of ideas. Call it instinct, but I always knew how things work, and how they could work better. From a young age, people sought my opinion on things that were important to them. Usually, I had helpful perspectives and answers to share, and my strategies worked. As a result, I developed into a really good strategist.
Yet for all the ideas I had of my own, I had no door. There were no resources and no opportunity.
Even now, I remember the ache: that deep yearning to express what was inside me, and not being able to. It hurt so badly. Angry at the status quo, I wanted to break it.
Back then, I used to pray for just one person. Somewhere, I hoped, there was someone I could pour all my dreams and plans into. That person would hold my hand and walk me through, step by step, until it was real.
Sadly, I never found that person.
Instead, I found people just like me: brilliant, talented and gifted in different ways. For hours, we would sit and talk about the future, about when we would finally live our dreams. However, dreams without opportunity form a tiresome, painful circle.
Becoming the person I never had
Then, as life got better and I found myself in a slightly better place, I received my greatest revelation:
What pains you is a clue to what you were born to heal.
So I made a decision. From then on, I would become the person I never had and be the change.
Soon, I started dreaming differently and thinking in SOLUTIONS. First, I asked: how do I find the ones walking the same hard road I walked? Then: how do I build a platform for the talented young person who only needs one opportunity to rise?
And how do I do it with others whose hearts burn with the same vision and passion?
Because I believe this with all my heart: you can own your dream, your vision and your idea. At the same time, you can still join hands freely with other visionaries and shine together. Competition that kills is not for me; collaboration that lifts is. That is why everything I build stands on collaboration. Ultimately, I want us to rise together.
That belief moved us to action.
From Little Saints to Makoko
In 2014, a conversation with an old friend who carried a similar desire led to our first outreach. It was one month of intensive skills training for the young teenagers of Little Saints Orphanage. The next year, we came back bigger and mobilized more entrepreneurs to give them more skills and more choices.
Year one: 50 beneficiaries.
Year two: 70 beneficiaries.
In year three, we decided to throw off the limits and set out to train 200 people in Makoko, Yaba, Lagos.
Over 1,000 people showed up.
A whopping 1,000, desperate for one chance.
So we stretched ourselves and broke our personal budget to train 250 of them. Of course, we wanted to train all 1,000, but we were running on personal funds. Doing more required more funding, more hands and more partnerships, and we simply did not have them.
Still, that experience broke me and built me. It showed me two things. First, the need is massive. Second, with the right support, the impact would be even more massive.
Why I cannot do it alone
That is what drives SOCASEMP INITIATIVE today, and you can see it in our impact so far.
With as much support as we receive, we are here to go all out. Our aim is to deliver real impact and create platforms for relevance. Above all, we champion human empowerment, sustainability and progressive development for our beneficiaries, our nation and our continent.
My goal as founder has never changed: to be a blessing and the person I needed for others. Likewise, I want to inspire and impact lives, and to change my nation and my world.
But I cannot do it alone. So I hope you will do it with me, with us.
I look forward to partnering with you, whether you volunteer, sponsor or give a donation.
Yours In Service,
Eunice Okoh
Founder / President
SOCASEMP INITIATIVE
