This summer, a group of Penn students established a transatlantic venture to Nigeria to aid urban youth through a new microfinance group, YouthBank.
YouthBank, a group started by graduates from the Huntsman Program — 2007 alumna Clara Chow and 2008 alumna Joyce Meng — is an international group dedicated to helping urban youth all over the world. The idea was born in 2007 and has been refined since then. This past summer, the project was finally actualized when the organization sent six students to Lagos, Nigeria.
The two overarching missions of YouthBank are employment and entrepreneurship, explained Alexander Yen, a Wharton and Engineering senior and chief operating officer of the organization.
YouthBank creates job opportunities and relevant training for young people, such as former sex workers and local gangs, Yen continued. The profit the organization earns from these jobs goes toward funding for microlending, which is used by the young workers to launch their own businesses after.
In other words, the model is “self-sustainable,” Yen said. The center in Lagos, Nigeria is YouthBank’s first applied model.
Wharton and College junior Kristin Hall described the trip to Nigeria as “pivotal.” During the trip, the six team members from Penn set up a photography studio, for which they recruited eight Nigerian youths — “fellows” — to participate in the program, in addition to the Nigerian staff and board of directors. They trained both staff members and fellows in “core business essentials,” Hall said.
Yen explained that after surveying the community, the group decided to establish the studio for business, having realized the need of people living in the region to share their stories.
“We wanted to act as a community center,” Yen said, adding that Surulere, the district of Lagos where this center has been set up, is the “Nollywood” of Nigeria, “so it only made sense.”
College and Wharton junior Danny Urgelles described the experience as “eye-opening,” as he had the chance to “see the excitement of young people being able to do their own thing, super eager to learn.”
Building on these past efforts and planning the upcoming initiatives, Meng said, YouthBank has been invited to branch out into other countries, like Kenya, Uganda and Cameroon. “People are genuinely excited about our innovative business incubator/microfinance model.”
Yen elaborated on the idea of “YouthBank in a Box” — “If it can work in Nigeria, it can work anywhere else, as long as we have the right kind of support structure.”
YouthBank receives support from various organizations on campus. The Law School Entrepreneurship Legal Clinic helped YouthBank to become incorporated as an official non-profit organization, and Communitech — a club that takes used computers from different schools and organizations and sets up computer labs around the world — donated equipment.
Yen added that as the group expands, it would welcome “further help and engagement from other students and schools at Penn.”
