School is heavy food. Heavy food is good for the body. However, it makes the system a bit clumsy. It is full and cannot move with rapid speed. We are the vitamins that make it agile. Hence, CIPDI Academy was founded to supplement, not replace, school.
We fill the gap between credentials and agency.
Why school is food, we are vitamins. School is heavy food but cannot flourish without vitamins. We found a disconnect between mainstream education and reality on ground. We don’t replace school. We supplement it. Teacher learns from student, student from teacher, street can teach. Right platform, system, leverage — hence CIPDI.
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We observed that students are taught to take isolated tests. It is just them alone in competition about who is more brilliant. But in the real world, we talk about teamwork, collaboration, and partnership. We talk about coming together to solve problems. This competitive mindset was laid while they were growing up. It is very difficult to unlearn and change bad habits, especially when there is no alternative.
Panacea 1 – The Solution: Collaboration Vitamin
We inject the Collaboration Vitamin. We replace isolated competition with result-oriented teamwork. We create an ecosystem where the teacher learns from the student and the student learns from the teacher, so collaboration becomes the new habit.
We saw Akara sellers tell their children to go to school to avoid suffering. The children went to school, got educated, but could not apply what they had studied. They waited for government jobs. When jobs did not come, frustration grew and they began to despise what their parents were doing.
But the woman frying Akara and selling vegetables funded two to three children to university level. She was doing something right. However, she did not see it that way, and her children did not see it either.
If she had a better mindset and helped her children to see it, after finishing school they could have scaled the business and made it bigger, instead of being ashamed of it.
Panacea 2 – The Solution: Mindset Vitamin
We inject the Mindset Vitamin. We reframe frying from suffering to scalable enterprise. The Akara mindset shift turns what was seen as something to escape into something to scale, so the next generation builds on it instead of abandoning it.
We realized that quality education that gives relevance and relatability is reserved for elites who can afford Harvard Business School and London Business School. Anyone else who cannot afford it is on their own.
School education is the food. It is heavy. But heavy food alone cannot help a system flourish, develop, and grow. We found a disconnect between mainstream education and the reality on the ground.
Panacea – The Solution: Bridge Vitamin
We are those vitamins. We do not replace school. We supplement it. We inject the Bridge Vitamin that connects education and learning. Our Mindset Vitamin, Collaboration Vitamin, and Bridge Vitamin allow young people and adults to integrate into a learning system where they continue to unlearn, learn, and relearn as they upskill and scale.
What is in it for everyone—from the pure water seller to the C-suite.
Winners as faculty. Tangible policy papers and dignity proof.
We believed it was time to teach skills because we observed that many students after school did not have the requisite skills and were not job ready. So we decided to start with graphics through our Catch Them Young program. We held trainings for younger students between the ages of 13 and 17, with a couple of students who were 18, 19, and 20. We found it really interesting, and there was big interest. Today, a few of them are still in graphics, doing bulk work part-time while in university.
We ventured into leadership training, using younger people, youths, and women to teach ethics, collaboration, partnership, and money management. We saw a whole lot of difference. When we asked the students, we found that most of the things they learned in school were just to pass examinations. Real life application was missing.
It dawned on us that there was something our education system really needs. It needs a jolt, a nutritional supplement, a boost that will become the catalyst to move it forward. And that is when CIPDI Academy was born, to become the nutritional vitamin and supplement that schools need to flourish, and that students need to build themselves, gain confidence, understand their purpose, and pursue their destiny.
We reimagined apprenticeship as Imu-Oru – The Mentor-Protégé Enterprise in Training. Like Manager in Training in companies, we honor the action – Imu-Oru – not the label. It is not master-servant, it is Mentor-Protégé, co-creating, leveraging strengths, complementing weaknesses, making learning stylish and elegant. We bring Main Street into the classroom where artisans and traders as Mentors and students as Protégés share real life, real world dynamics – Mentors learn technology and digital skills from Protégés, Protégés gain experience and wisdom from Mentors. Bidirectional. Win-win. Vincio Enterprises in the classroom.
We provide capacity building for civil servants, teachers, medical doctors, care workers, security personnel, and other professionals. We bring them together in an environment of learning and collaboration to solve problems in specific fields. When people are part of creating an idea to solve a problem, implementation becomes seamless. They take it back to their workplaces and become part of the policy making process.
We take learning to market women and artisans who do not have time, money, or credentials for brick and mortar schools. We leverage their wealth of experience running profitable enterprises and add supplements in bookkeeping, money management, and scaling. We turn a small vegetable stall from please don’t suffer like me, go to school, into an enterprise their children will be proud to take over. This stimulates the economy and brings everyday people into governance and policy making.
We provide capacity building for NGOs, civil society organizations, and community leaders. These grassroots actors reach the people directly. We call it training the trainer, because trainers themselves often do not receive adequate training. We bring them together virtually or physically to share real life stories and cases, listen without judging or blaming, and find better ways to handle advocacy and develop position papers that influence legislation. As a UN ECOSOC status organization, we step down global learnings from top to bottom to the community through working groups.
