20 years later and the highlight of our February is not Valentine’s day but our partnership with Lagos Business School that sees 50 members of the National Youth Service Corps from across the country graduate from the JA Nigeria Venture in Management Program (ViMP) after spending a week networking, learning, unlearning and re-learning with some of the best minds in business.

The ViMP is an annual one- week intensive mini-MBA in that teaches the tenets of strategy, business management, finance, corporate governance, ethics and leadership through MBA-modeled business cases.

This year’s edition held from the 10^th to 15^th of February 2020 and the participants were exposed to the world of management through several lectures with well-tailored case studies showing real-life problems which triggered participants to proffer solutions to them. They also had some special guests who served as facilitators of industry focus discussions and judges of competitions some of which are Mr. Niyi Yusuf, Managing Partner at Verraki Partners and JA Nigeria Board Member; Adenike Adeyemi, Executive Director at FATE Foundation and 2002 ViMP Alumni; Ayo Akinola, Co-founder PiggyVest; JA Nigeria National Program Manager, Ugonna Achebe amongst others.

In addition to the learning activities, the participants gave back to the society by teaching JA programs in schools and also got to network with alumni from past editions of the program as far back as 2001.

We are indeed grateful to the sponsors of this year’s ViMP, African Capital Alliance Foundation and Total E&P Nigeria Staff Multipurpose Cooperative Society for giving our participants this experience. We are also grateful to Lagos Business School and Verraki Partners for their support in implementing the program.

“ViMP experience is a lifetime investment that keeps on yielding. The career-defining experience gave me the foundational knowledge on leadership strategy and financial management that I still use today. The program also strengthened my interest and passion to build a career in the non-profit sector and that’s what I currently do.” – Mrs Adenike Adeyemi, Executive Director, FATE Foundation (ViMP Alumnus, 2002)