SAGE Nigeria
Students for the Advancement of Global Entrepreneurship
WHY SAGE?
1. SAGE allows secondary school students to seek solutions to real world problems by working cooperatively on projects that they identify, deliver and assess, with input from their advisors, their Business Advisory Board (BAB) members and their teachers.
2. SAGE directly involves local business and community leaders in working with the secondary school students as the student’s complete real-world, experiential learning projects. This extraordinary “team” effort is unparalleled among youth programs offering entrepreneurship education, financial literacy and community service, and creates an opportunity for government, business, NGO’s and other poverty eradication stakeholders to become involved in youth entrepreneurship. Involvement is key, because people support what they help create;
3. SAGE encourages intrascholastic collaboration because students can work on SAGE projects as part of an existing curriculum or after school (like athletics and drama). At the end of the year, each secondary school must select a team of presenters who travel to a regional conference (i.e., tournament) to present their results in front of a panel of external reviewers (i.e., referees). The team rated the highest advances to a national competition, and the winner of the national competition advances to the SAGE World Cup;
4. SAGE encourages interscholastic competition; SAGE students don’t compete for grades; rather, they compete for the same type of recognition that comes with interscholastic sports. The competitive element incorporated into SAGE cannot be overstated. This structure allows teams to “benchmark” their best projects against other secondary schools from one year to the next.
- SAGE requires the completion of local projects, but each SAGE team must do so with an eye toward international issues; by including a judging criterion with a global dimension, SAGE provides secondary students with an international perspective and, for the most outstanding students, a unique cultural exchange program when they travel to the SAGE World Cup each year
6. Doesn’t mandate any one curriculum nor intrude on existing student organizations; on the contrary, SAGE provides an avenue for these student organizations to showcase what they’ve learned and earned by presenting their results in a public exhibition, thereby increasing the potential for existing financial education curricula to expand their “market share.”
7. SAGE's global logo is green, and is represented by two hands interlocked in a handshake superimposed across the globe. The logo is green to represent Mother Earth, which provides the scarce, natural resources that all human beings must use wisely. The shaking hands represent friendship, peace and goodwill to all people, and is meant to show how socially-responsible businesses and social entrepreneurs can work together to build global networks to improve the financial, human, and social conditions in their own communities.
create a dynamic network of proactive young social – entrepreneurs who are taking actions and volunteering for the pursuit of the attainment of the MDGs. (MDGs Youth Ambassadors!)
OBJECTIVES
To promote a better understanding of entrepreneurship and community service as well as communicating the MDGs through community based projects. The secondary school students are engaged in hand-on activities as they learn new financial literacy skills, social entrepreneurship and volunteerism while they work on REAL WORLD projects. This ultimately creates NEW small businesses; social enterprises and community service projects. SAGE facilitates community participation in the actualization of the MDGs in Nigeria.
IMPACT
Since the adoption of the SAGE programme in Nigeria, it has shown that it is a potent model for educational reform, youth re-orientation, and community service and poverty eradication.
Various communities are already benefiting from these young entrepreneurs’ yearly projects which include provision of portable water, provision of ante natal clinic, waste recycling -conversion of waste to bio-gas and the generation of employment through their business projects.
At the end of every SAGE year between May and July SAGE business, environmental and community service projects are showcased in a “tournament” which recognizes outstanding secondary school teams based on their effectiveness & creativity.
Best SAGE teams advance in the tournament that climaxes at the international competition tagged -SAGE World Cup. SAGE World Cup offers the world an annual event that facilitates multi-cultural integration and global business networking opportunities.
SAGE World Cup debuted in the United States of America eight years ago in the city of Chico, California. The first, second and third editions were held in California USA, with USA and Ukraine emerging as the champions.
The Fourth edition in 2006 moved to Shanghai, China. USA emerged as the champions while Nigeria placed third.
The city of Odessa, Ukraine hosted the fifth edition in 2007 and Nigeria beat other teams including China, USA, Ukraine, South Africa and Philippines amongst others to emerge as the SAGE World Cup champion.
Successful implementation of the SAGE GLOBAL programme earned Nigeria the 2007 SAGE World Cup Trophy and the right to host the prestigious 2008 SAGE World Cup in Abuja.
As the world was still wondering if that was real, at the SAGE Global Competition hosted by the city of Abuja in 2008, Nigeria beat the world by emerging yet again the world SAGE Champion.
The world stood still for these Nigerian children again as the two teams that represented Nigeria in Brazil at the seventh SAGE World cup-- Junior Secondary School Jikwoyi Abuja and Government Secondary School Jibi Abuja emerged First and Second positions respectively beating the teams from USA and South Korea to Third and Fourth positions respectively. The team from JSS Jikwoyi also won the prize for best environmental project while GSS Jibi took away the prizes for best MDGs projects on Maternal Mortality and Universal Primary Education.
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