Ikenna Okeh: Ikenna Okeh is a novelist, poet and children’s book author from Nigeria. He has published A Harvest of Verses, a collection of poetry. Okeh’s three narrative verses, A Tale To Twist, The Chronicles of Romeo and An Eye For An Isle, are both book-length African epic stories with rich cultural and historical backdrops. Roger D’Arcy of LongSongs Music has likened these to Homer’s Iliad, told with simple language. He has also published two illustrated children’s books The Man Who Thought Little of Himself and When Everyone Sings. Both books are intended to entertain children whilst teaching them such values as self-esteem and diligence.
Okeh started out writing short stories and in 2014 was selected amongst other young writers to participate in the Caine Prize Short Story Surgery. In 2018, Okeh published his first novel, The Operative, a crime novel set in Port-Harcourt, Nigeria, but with an international reach. The Operatives and his other works are available in the library of The Nordic Africa Institute, Sweden. Okeh also writes music reviews and is co-founder of UbuntuFM Hip-Hop and UbuntuFM Music, both of which are online platforms respectively dedicated to the promotion, digital sales and distribution of music to a global audience.
Okeh was born in Port-Harcourt Nigeria where he had his early education. He did not have the luxury of books while growing up, and it wasn’t until he had come of age that he began to satisfy his taste for books. A few years into his writing career, he realized that the African child was being left out with regards to content creation and literary entertainment. He saw this as a threat to society’s balance, considering that for want of creative content to engage in, children got exposed to adult contents much earlier than they otherwise should. To fill this void, he began to write for the African child, but the absence of a dependable publishing and distribution network in Nigeria and West Africa became a great challenge to tackle. Hence he founded the Educate One Child Foundation, to raise funds so that children all over rural and urban West African communities can be constantly supplied directly with books written by himself and any other African writers.
Steven Dossou
Inspirational speaker, founder of Sail Force Catalyst, Sail Force Marketing, Author of 2 books and co-founder of Leadership University. Sail Force is an empowerment and motivational platform which focuses on the use of emotional intelligence to ignite a transformation of individuals and groups. Sail Force is about unleashing people’s emotional strengths necessary for the fulfilment of their true potentials as regards to their life and business journeys.
Mentored by Arthur Carmazzi, the world top #4 thought leader and world’s top #8 in organizational culture, Steven is well versed in DC psychology foundations as well as processes for effective culture transformation. Throughout his career in sales and marketing, Steven has taken on major leadership roles in worldwide organizations. With a passion for human development and empowerment, Steven is a certified life and executive coach and has in just so far spoken and trained thousands of people on subjects such as sales habits, impactful leadership, business growth, the digitization of trainer’s businesses …etc.
Born and raised in Togo, West Africa, and having spent time in other parts of Africa and on different other continents, Steven joined the Educate One Child Foundation to offer his experiences in interpersonal relations, web development and human development towards the attainment of the foundation’s visions which he is a firm believer in.
He is viewed by his peers as a charismatic dreamer who undoubtedly believes in harnessing the human potential for breaking boundaries and consistently re-defining limits.
Chukwunyere Emenogu:
Chukwunyere Emenogu is a Nigerian filmmaker with experience in audio and visual content creation. He is passionate about creative development of children and young adults. In 2016, he started an action comic book series, The Justice Unit with a couple of friends. The goal was to provide entertainment for young adults in Africa. His comic stories and illustrations are set in contemporary Nigeria with the intent of having his readers identify with the settings and characters and as well easily benefit from the values inherent in the stories. With his works, he seeks to address social issues while providing entertainment.
Emenogu grew up in Port-Harcourt, Nigeria. He loves reading and holding conversations around books and audio-visual contents. Of everything, he regrets that he never had access to books as a growing child. Reading is a habit he developed as an adult and he enjoys every moment when he is free to read and digest information of a literary nature. He is also concerned that there aren’t enough books and entertainment content available in Nigeria and other parts of West Africa for children and young adults. It is this concern that drives his personal efforts towards social advancement through content creation and collaborations.
Emenogu joined the Educate One Child Foundation because its vision is in line with his life’s work of bringing suitable entertainment and educational content to children and young adults in Africa.