Kudos to Rufai Balogun on becoming the latest winner in the Solar Jooce RE & Entrepreneurship youth challenge at the 'Dustbin Estate' in the Ajegunle area of Lagos State.
At the 13th December workshop held at the youth center in Ajegunle. Eight attendees were shown an actual Direct Current (DC) iron and asked to compete to win one in an individual essay contest. The objective was to have them think creatively on how to start a micro business in their neighborhood using solar powered appliances in combination with DC power from solar panels.
A Vimeo video titled 'AC or DC' by Nextek Power (http://vimeo.com/16061080) was shown to illustrate the benefits of DC over AC power.
Six contestants successfully submitted their one page essay, two short days later on 15th December 2014. The youths each showed marked improvements in their understanding of micro businesses by including concepts such as 'Pay back period' in their planning as previously suggested by a judge from Heinrich Böll Foundation (Nigeria) in the September 2014 contest.
The contest judges from Heinrich Böll Foundation (Nigeria) and United Nations Habitat (Kenya) graciously accepted to judge the contest entries and did a phenomenal job grading all entries and providing insightful feedback to the youths. The judges each graded entries on a 20 point scale taking into account factors such as originality, creativity, sustainability and clarity in expressing their business ideas.
Rufai Balogun won by achieving the highest cumulative score of 34 points. Heinrich Böll Foundation awarded him 19 points out of a possible 20, while United Nations Habitat awarded him
15 points out of 20.
Rufai received his prize from Solar Jooce on Monday, 22nd December 2014 at the youth center in the 'Dustbin Village' in Ajegunle, Lagos.
Excerpts of comments from Heinrich Böll Foundation on Rufai's entry titled 'Easy Ironing' went as follows:
“Easy Ironing” made its name a part of the marketing strategy – beautiful idea. He has done his market survey and proposes to iron a shirt for free if somebody brings a new customer. He knows his operating costs (N 200/week) although he did not consider them for the payback period. He is the only one who thought about using profit for the purchase of the battery so that his operating costs reduce. It’s a very creative proposal and well written."
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