Most young persons are said to now seek mentorship to improve their lives and become better in life, especially in entrepreneurship.
This was disclosed by Vivian Izuchi Nwokeibem, the 2025 Junior Chamber International (JCI) Port Harcourt Metro President who is also chief host of the ‘Kalada Apiafi Business Summit’.
The summit featured strategic trainings and life-coach matters that could help young professionals find their bearing in life.
In an interview outside, the president said: “We thought to put up an event that would have a lot of young persons who are looking for mentorship, young persons who need advice, who need directions on how to approach maybe their careers or their businesses. That’s where this was born out of right, So we put up this so that they can have people who are older and have more experience in whatever line of business to come talk to us and then, of course, learn a few things from it to help us become better as well.
She said they looked at areas such as health, finance, etc. She said it’s also to learn under fun and create work-life balance. “You are looking for money. You’re trying to make it in life, but you also need to know that you need to take care of your own self.”
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She said there were hopes for more sessions after this. She said: “JCI is a group for young persons, I would say, for active citizens between the ages of 18 and 40. But beyond that, we have members who are way above 40, those ones who are life members, the senators, like the one who it was named after. So these persons are authorities, and most of these persons are managing directors, and, you know, owners of private entities.
Apiafi’s takeaways:
Kalada Apiafi, a mentor who now has the rank of ‘senator’, who is chairman of the Wider Perspectives group, a firm of management consultants, told BusinessDay: “They decided to honour me today by naming this business summit after me, I believe, for meritorious service and mentoring and engaging with them.
“The first thing I talked about is the fact that people shouldn’t be afraid to fail, so people have to be bold about things. The other key takeaway is that leadership makes the difference and it’s very critical so whatever young people are doing in life while they are gaining their technical proficiency or technical skills, they must also acquire leadership skills because that’s what will take them to the top.”
He said he was impressed few week back at the StartupSouth and at some of other conferences where a lot of young business leaders showed their prowess.
“For me the major problem for the entrepreneurship ecosystem is the need for infrastructure. Just give us the enabling environment we are ready to move, that is how it is everywhere. Just give us the enabling environment. That is how it is everywhere in the world. It’s not the duty of entrepreneurs to provide power, etc.
“My parting advise is that the public sector and the private sector needs to collaborate a lot more to move the economy forward, I believe we have a lot of dynamic young people, they are looking for outlets, of course everybody cannot be an entrepreneur so government had to create that environment for entrepreneurs to be able to create jobs because that’s one of our pressing needs now, it’s jobs.”
