Reyhan quickly discovered that she was interested not only in learning, but in action. In Azerbaijan, strong rains frequently cause temporary electrical outages. Reyhan wondered whether one challenge could be used to solve the other, and whether rainwater could be used to generate energy. For four months, she and a friend, assisted by mentors, ran calculations and developed a device capable of doing exactly that. With financial support from the Azerbaijani government, Reyhan built her first prototype.
Her goal was to present her product at the 2017 ClimateLaunchpad, the world's biggest green business competition. But in an accident, the generator shut down four days before the national final. In desperation, the team turned to two of the country's leading engineers, who told them that rebuilding the prototype in the time remaining was impossible. Undeterred, Reyhan and her team worked nonstop to re‐create their model—and won the “Audience Favorite Startup” award in the ClimateLaunchpad competition.
She was just 15 years old.
Since then, Reyhan secured new investors and considered broadening her work to additional countries like the Philippines, India, Malaysia, and Indonesia, where monsoons are frequent, taking her idea and her entrepreneurial drive to new heights.
Reyhan didn't start her journey with immense stores of resources or broad support networks. Rather, she tapped into her driving passion to make an impact, and determined to push through challenges to reach her goals.
We know that individuals play critical roles in starting movements, for good or for ill. We've seen these movements play out in the last few decades. A merchant sets himself on fire and ignites the Arab Spring. A schoolgirl from Pakistan survives an assassin's bullet and fights for the right for women in her society to access education. A young Swedish activist challenges world leaders to address climate change, spurring global protests by millions of young people demanding a better future.
Of course, not every individual‐led movement succeeds or crystalizes into positive impact. That's why there's more to being a citizen statesperson than being the symbol of a campaign or a liaison to global powers. To be a citizen statesperson, you must shape the dialogue and outcome according to your values. You must build social currency over time through social change efforts. And you must strive to play a meaningful and constructive role in helping to solve big problems in areas where traditional institutions have fallen short.
At their best, a political statesperson and a citizen statesperson do the same things; they bring people together, they forge solutions through diplomacy, and they push for agendas and social changes that benefit society. The difference is that a political statesperson is someone who represents his or her country or community in an appointed role, while a citizen statesperson is self‐appointed—spurred by civic responsibility to take on larger challenges and harness a force for good in the world.
That's why the values we're discussing are so critical. Without drive, a person can't find the motivation to get involved in civic work. Without practicality, one can't navigate existing obstacles. Without perspective, one can't envision the impact that is possible through their own applied effort. The values that describe citizen statespeople—from realism to focus to leadership to scale—don't just help citizen statespeople achieve their goals; they also get regular people to the starting gate, helping others achieve their potential and become citizen statespeople themselves.
From Local to Global
Evolving into a citizen statesperson often starts at a local level, solving problems for local people. In some cases, this kind of service can manifest a form of training; an opportunity to become educated as a leader while positioning yourself to make a unique and outsized impact. Local service also teaches you how to find the heart of a challenge—to get as close as possible to decision‐makers and stakeholders to design solutions and make a difference. From there, you can build awareness about an issue by engaging media or by protesting injustice. You can meet concerned individuals and put people and powerbrokers in the same room. If you can make an impact in your neighborhood, you can look outward to similar challenges that impact larger communities and affect broader populations; scale your service outward to apply your knowledge to more expansive issues.
This kind of outward progression isn't theoretical. It's real.
As a young person in Nigeria, Mene Blessing witnessed the challenges facing agricultural workers on the continent. With 80 percent of smallholder farmers in Africa subsisting on an income of less than $2 a day, meeting the high cost of food for poultry and livestock is often a challenge. His personal experience led him to set up Unorthodox Feeds Innovation for Rural Enterprising Smallholder Farmers, or UNFIRE—a program that provides farmers with feed costing 60 percent less than regular options, enabling farmers to increase their output and their incomes by as much as 80 percent. Produced from agricultural waste, such as mango seed kernels, elephant grass, maize, and cassava waste from milling plants, UNFIRE's feed is unique, culturally acceptable, and suitable for a range of poultry and livestock. It's sustainably produced, too, with UNFIRE operating a community‐based, self‐supportive model. Local youth groups are engaged in the collection of fair‐trade raw materials that are purchased by UNFIRE, and rural women are recruited, trained, and empowered to run their own businesses as vendors, supplying and selling the feed within their own communities. The model was designed to benefit both farmers and their communities.
The program worked. During Mene's pilot, some 58 tons of mango seed waste was recovered and used by UNFIRE teams as part of a partnership with JA Farms in Nigeria. During an 18‐month pilot program, 5,000 consumers benefited. Twenty‐seven young people were engaged to help collect raw materials and 10 women vendors were employed to sell the seed. Each of these vendors, who were previously unemployed, generated the equivalent of local minimum wage. More than 14 million grams of livestock products were produced over the 18‐month period, including 45,000 eggs and 3,070 chickens.
Mene didn't stop there. Instead, he built his work further, and went on to co‐found and become COO of Vetsark, a data science social enterprise working to help predict and prevent disease and pest outbreaks in Nigeria. He used his success to help develop other citizen‐statespeople; in 2016, he co‐founded Inspire Africa—a Pan‐African institution designed to transform the careers and life trajectories of a new generation of leaders and entrepreneurs in Africa by delivering high‐impact entrepreneurship and leadership education to African youth. Against the backdrop of Nigeria's 58.1 percent youth unemployment rate, Inspire Africa trained 3,000 young people, helped fund more than 120 business ventures, and created more than 300 jobs.
Mene was not groomed into office by a political patron. He wasn't given a public platform by a well‐heeled relative. Instead, Mene harnessed his ability to make an impact by using his values and skills to build a coalition for change. He appointed himself to solve hunger in Africa, helping to support farmers and consumers alike. Then he appointed himself to address the education to employment gap, enabling young peers to compete in today's evolving markets and ensuring that talent does not remain on the sideline. Mene's journey is just beginning; as a citizen‐statesperson, Mene is still looking for ways to expand impact outward, to develop effective solutions, and to fuel ever‐larger change.
That's how an individual can use local knowledge to make a global impact. For people around the world, that's how one citizen statesperson's leadership can change lives and set a new course for the future. That's the power of a citizen‐statesperson.
Discussion Questions
How do you embody the traits of a citizen statesperson?
What values drive your interest in citizen statespersonship?
What does your local community look like? What community is at the heart of the change you want to make?
Notes
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