Today we’d like to introduce you to Chi Okeke.
Hi Chi, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start, maybe you can share some of your backstories with our readers.
Commendably, there has been tremendous support for the advancement of young women globally in recent years. However, there is still room and the imperative to reach and impact more young women proximally and locally in contribution to the vision. I was mentoring some teenagers outside my local church and noticed some of them were struggling with low academic scores, regular disruptive suspensions, a corollary low self-esteem, and the inevitable limited opportunities for success, and realized that these issues were not limited to my mentees, at that time, but affected at-risk communities; particularly students who attended title-1 schools. We understood that these disadvantageous behaviors were offshoots of significant systemic, psychological, and socio-economic issues posing barriers in the minds of our target students. We were deeply moved to make a contributory impact toward the solution and reversal of such a future-growth stunting trend, thereby creating LeadHER Foundation in 2017. It was conceived to provide empowering programs, mentorship, resources, and opportunities to help bridge the threateningly chasmic gap, if continually ignored, and therein expand their horizons, creating more realistic possibilities for success.
Our flagship program – The LeadHER Scholar – is a career exploration program that provides the next generation of at-risk youth career exploration education, resources, and mentorship opportunities.
It has not been an easy journey, as it required understanding the students and communities we served in order to assess how best to meaningfully impact them. Today, we have supported 284 students, given $7000+ in scholarships, and assisted 90 non-partner schools and beneficiaries. But it’s not just about the numbers. It is about the increasing impact we believe we are making in the lives of our students, who deserve a chance to succeed and be better contributors to society.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
Firstly, choosing to make a difference like this is never without any obstacles and can be challenging but rewarding. It requires the hard work of helping our students rethink possibilities and change mindsets to harvest community leaders to better society. We saw disparities during COVID-19 increasing the gap between the haves and have-nots in learning, opportunities, resources, etc. For example, we couldn’t have any in-person meetings and mentorship, thus limiting the effectiveness of the mentorship program. We then scheduled virtual meetings. However, some of our students did not have reliable internet access to participate in virtual mentorship opportunities. Furthermore, getting teenagers to invest and commit to the length of the program can be dauntingly challenging due to the short-term thinking we observe with students at this socio-economic level. Some of our students have to take care of family members and work to support themselves and their families, making it difficult to commit to the program.
Moreover, getting committed volunteers who understand the unique challenges our students face to serve our students, build connections with them and be patient with them is appreciably not easy. Dealing with students from these communities require a great deal of patience, commitment, and love to make the desired impact.
Lastly, we need to build more solid relationships with employers, colleges, trade schools to provide opportunities to our students, such as paid internships, hands-on learning experiences, field trip experiences.
Overall, addressing these challenges by making the program more hands-on, enjoyable and providing opportunities for volunteers to make an impact. We remain dedicated to overcoming these obstacles to achieving our mission.
We’ve been impressed with LeadHER Foundation, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
LeadHER Foundation is an organization that is dedicated to the advancement of at-risk females between the ages of 14-18 in our community through education, mentoring, and sponsorship. Our well-rounded career exploratory program fosters critical thinking and personal development and is targeted across 3 pillars of impact: Education, Entrepreneurship, and Technology. We achieve our goals by:
• Expanding horizons to showcase potential career options
• Fostering skill development through group collaboration
• Providing caring and supportive mentors for our scholars
• Raise awareness of the impact young women can make in business, communities, and economies
• Support College Dreams through the LeadHER Scholarship fund
We providing resources not limited to:
• LeadHer Day in a life series to provide real hands-on learning and experiences
• LeadHer Seedfund to provide funding for innovative ideas originating from our students
• LeadHer Field trip to provide opportunities to explore new environments to spark and ignite interests in their minds
Through our program, we strive to empower our students to expand their horizons, pursue big dreams, help break down the barriers that often limit our students from accessing career opportunities, and inspire them to believe in themselves and their potential.
We are growing our reach and impact; thus, we are seeking committed volunteers to join us in achieving our mission of supporting the next generation of at-risk youth between ages 14-98. Please reach out to us at info@leadherfoundation.org to be a part of the work we are doing
What matters most to you? Why?
We are passionate about creating an equitable and inclusive society and a larger world where every individual has the chance to thrive and succeed. We imagine a world where our students have as many opportunities to create a future for themselves, gain independence and be better contributors to society. We work primarily with teen females, firmly subscribing to the wise notion: When you empower a woman, you empower her community. She thinks about her parents, partner, children, neighbors, friends and in many cases, positively impacts her community.
The work we do matters and has great impact. For example, we had a high-school senior who was already making good money braiding hair and had no plans to go to college. However, when she sat through our post-high-school career planning session, she realized that getting a business education can help her think about growing and scaling her business so she can be financially independent and even employ people to grow her business. She is currently in her second year at Lone Star College, Houston. We have many stories like this that serve as fuel for the work we do and is also rewarding to see.
We are driven by love to ensure that we are providing the right resources and mentorship to help them expand their horizons so they know there are other rewarding careers besides other worthy careers in hair braiding, retail, etc. We look forward to the day when our students will say, “I did not know that I could achieve my dream of being a “professional,” but LeadHER mentors helped me realize that dream.” Or I didn’t realize there was a career in product marketing, but LeadHEr mentors helped me realize the possibility.”
Contact Info:
- Website: www.leadherfoundation.org
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/leadherfoundation/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/leadher-foundation/
