00:00My name is Ebony King and I'm the founder of Elevate Her UK. Now Elevate Her UK came
00:23about due to my lived experiences as a teenage mom going through various issues as I was
00:32growing up through various issues. I decided that when I'm older and I have the right resources
00:37and the time I want to help other young people you know get the support that I lacked. Now
00:44with Elevate Her UK we are an award-winning organization that supports young girls from
00:51the ages of 11 to 25. We do mentoring, we do empowerment workshops, we do outreach. We
01:01partner with the local government in the UK. They commission us to go into secondary schools
01:05to do one-to-one mentoring with girls who are at risk of school exclusion. So what we do
01:10is we teach them skills that they could use as a side hustle. For instance maybe learning
01:16how to do lashes, learning how to do nails, learning how to do makeup or hair. We also
01:23do youth safety campaigns. We did a financial exploitation campaign which Barclays Bank and
01:31Snapchat were you know big supporters of. Yeah so we just basically empower the youth. We
01:37provide job opportunities for them.
01:40Why we are here in Lagos today is because I created the Diaspora Girls Connect program,
01:47cultural exchange program which the idea behind that is to try to get young people in the UK
01:54to connect with their roots or to connect with Africa because not everyone here today is Nigerian.
02:01In fact not everyone here is African you know we have a mixture. So but we just want young British
02:07people to remember where they come from, where their ancestors came from. And aside from just
02:15connecting with their roots we also wanted to show them that you can actually thrive in Lagos.
02:20You can be successful. There are various successful people in various fields you know. So that was the
02:26point of this cultural exchange program. It also stems from me having to become an unexpected landlord
02:32in Lagos in Lagos because my father passed away early last year. He had various properties in
02:39Nigeria. Although he was born and bred in the UK he still had that connection of going back home. So
02:45that was instilled in me. However I never had prior to him passing away I never had
02:49that intention to ever invest in Nigeria until when I became an unexpected landlord and I was forced to
02:56because I'm the first sibling. You know and I realized after a while with the right connections
03:01with the right research it's not that bad. A lot of the young British people they feel like there's a
03:07disconnect. There's just a few percentage who come back to Africa but it's only for dirty December
03:13purposes and we wanted to change that narrative. For instance my son my first son he's 17 years old
03:18when I told him about this he was like he's not what's why am I going there to do. But his female
03:24counterparts they wanted to come you know. So we're trying to change the narrative and yeah that's why
03:30we're here today. Especially I would say because at the time when I became a mum it was that time
03:37it was more of I mean now now times have changed so there's still a stigma but it's not as bad as before
03:45and but coming from an African household the support was very limited very limited you get judged the
03:54support is very limited from family the community there was not that much support and I'm not just
03:59talking about physical support I'm talking about mental health support I had to be strong on my own
04:04I had to be resilient and I had to find the I had to find my way basically you know yes it took it took a while
04:12because I was misguided I was I had to learn on the streets but later I was able to go in the right path
04:21I went to uni got my psychology degree and you know went up from there say more or less because they've
04:26joined the cultural exchange program so yes however we do have main our main Elevate Her UK staff here joined
04:35with us today aside from the delegates who have joined this cultural exchange program we have Elevate Her
04:40her staff and we have Elevate Her UK youth ambassadors our youth ambassadors start off as volunteers and then
04:46when we see how you know serious they are about joining the communities Elevate Her is like a sisterhood
04:52then they now upgrade to youth ambassador we launched Elevate Her Africa in 2022
04:57so yeah this will be the second time but it's the first cultural exchange program in Nigeria
05:03I'll probably say there needs to be there's a lot of cyber bullying there's a lot of social media
05:10harassment going on online and it actually a lot of it's affecting a lot of young people's mental health
05:16so I think there needs to be more of a censorship or restriction I don't know something just needs to happen
05:22also I think in the media the social media in Nigeria you should be more welcoming or inviting to people from the diaspora
05:30not just for Dirty December create more connections I mean what we're doing what we've done with this cultural exchange program is the first of its kind
05:40there's no there's no youth organization in the UK especially black owned that's done what we've done
05:46we're the first and there should be more there should be more that you know that are able to create opportunities like this
05:52I also say there should be people that can support more because it's been it's been a very it's been a big struggle
06:00we thank God for the supporters that we do have but it's been a struggle and it would have been nice to have more supporters
06:05we're having the diaspora girls connect summit on Wednesday and it's gonna be at the Wheat Baker Hotel
06:13we're doing it in partnership with Latif Jakonde Leadership Academy which is an initiative of the Governor of Lagos State
06:23so they'll be there it's a high impact summit intimate summit private summit
06:28and our 15 delegates will be meeting with 15 Nigerian young women
06:34and there will be discussions panel discussions and yeah things like that
06:38it's not open to the public because of spaces limited spaces but if you know
06:44it's open to the media so yeah so we've got media partners that are involved so yeah it's open to the media
06:50yes the Guardian are welcome
06:52between 11 to 2 yeah this is the first event however we have in 2022 we launched our NGO here
07:02in the UK we've been running since 2019
07:05they will be doing in well they've the lineup is going to the government ministries learning
07:13getting industry insights going to beauty spaces learning from them real estate different sectors
07:20the music sector learning from that throughout the 10 days those are the things that are planned up
07:25so they will be learning skills through the conversations that they have with these professionals
07:30for this young particular young women yes between the ages of 16 to 26 they've actually supported us quite a lot
07:38especially with having government access because LJLA is an initiative from the Governor of Lagos State
07:47we've had a lot of access political access which has actually for instance Ministry of Tourism they welcomed us
07:56and we will be going to the commissioner tomorrow so she will be sharing you know some political advice to our delegates
08:04and they've also helped us with the summit preparation
08:08they've connected us with certain people and they've also managed to help us secure a tiny donation
08:15it's an eye-opener because bringing both of them together and them actually speaking they can actually find out about the similarities the differences
08:25you know they can be able to bounce off of each other with the information they get so it's learning
08:29it's a learning before you can make changes in life you need to learn you need to do your research
08:34so this is like the initial step before we active before we you know we get into it
08:40no there's no age limit on the guests the delegates there's an age limit for the guests
08:44some opportunities you know you might want to you might finish your degree and you might be looking
08:48in fact not you might I know young people in the UK who finished their degree at least one or two years ago
08:53they're still searching for jobs in the UK however with that good quality degree if you come to Lagos you can get a good job in the government
08:59LJLA they provide a lot of opportunities for you to be able to access and get get jobs and start working into the government field
09:08so don't you so we're saying don't just think about coming to Nigeria for Dettisemba to have a good time
09:12there's nothing wrong with that I used to do that as well before but think about it in on the long term for your future
09:19you can invest in property you can be making extra money there's different things you can be doing
09:24no the thing is we were with a politician yesterday and we this came up so he said there's a long process of what we have to do before we can be allowed
09:33right now we're not allowed but there's a long process and when he did speak about it it's something that the young people could
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