MY N.G.O, IS NOT YOUR NON PROFIT

In a bid to positively impact on my generation, I have decided to “open” an N.G.O in five easy steps. My N.G.O would be called youths for positive action (Y.P.A) or positive action youths (P.A.Y). I do prefer the latter though, it’s a much better combination and it provides me a fine acronym. By and large it would be a lot more convenient to introduce myself as the founder and president of P.A.Y foundation.

The acronym PAY would be inserted into the foundation’s motto “…We pay the future”. It’s a rather meaningless motto when you think of it, but it serves to create an identity which is what we need. WE NEED? Well by “we” I mean the motley crew of ten or so other young men and women, I would need to enlist alongside myself to make my N.G.O conventional and contemporary. Think of it. An N.G.O with just one founder/member? Who does that? That would seem downright dodgy, so I should be needing the extra fellows as my subordinates cum lieutenants.

To my understanding, most youth themed N.G.O.s’ are often the brainchild of two categories of people; the attention/thrill seeker and then of course your average hustler. Make no mistake about it; I am clearly in it for the money and the money alone. Now logically it follows that whatever proceeds are realized from the N.G.O venture would have to be shared between myself and my lieutenants. I would consider this grossly unfair, after all the N.G.O is solely and entirely my brainchild. But after much thought I realized that I could take care of this by painstakingly recruiting only attention seekers as my lieutenants or resource persons as I would like to call them. All of that should wrap up the crucial first step.

For step number two, I would need to invest something in the neighborhood of #250,000 in the project. This amount would go into creating the website PAY foundation.com (I could get a nice friend to do that for free), the printing of flyers, monogramming of T-shirts, face caps, banners and the all-important culmination in aimless and dainty street carnivals to draw the attention of other fickle minded youths to our activities.

So instead of being useful in our community in the good old traditional way; say by noiselessly helping the single mother next door with her laundry or assisting her children with their homework, I and my resource persons conserve our physical energy and save it for appearances on T.V shows, Preferably (N.T.A’s a.m. express) where we appear sporting our branded contraband T-shirts and school boy face caps. During the T.V interview we would make sure to suavely introduce ourselves with high sounding titles like; president, deputy president, general secretary, secretary general, and of course resource persons.

A typical T.V appearance promoting the activities of P.A.Y foundation would go like this;

Show host: what are the aims of P.A.Y foundation?

Me: basically we are providing a platform for youth re-orientation, positive lifestyle education and leadership training.

Please note that our every answer invariably begins with “basically”. Observation has taught me that when you achieve the double feat of owning your own N.G.O and appearing on breakfast television, basically is more than just another word. It becomes the prefix for every sentence. Look around to confirm this.

Show host: so how long has P.A.Y foundation been in existence?

Me: basically for about a year now. We have our headquarters in Lagos but we are about opening other chapters in Abuja, Port Harcourt and Kano and we shall be reaching other cities very soon.

As much as possible, I and my aides would try to answer all questions in a borrowed artificial accent, not forgetting to use catch phrases like youth empowerment, positive thinking, paradigm shift and of course leadership training. Our lame attempt at simulating a sleek image is necessary to attract the support and sponsorship of corporate bodies (hopefully one of those shylock telecom giants or any of those airlines that can’t keep its planes from falling out of the sky) so we can write at the bottom right corner of our flyers powered by so-so bank or X-X Corporation.

Just before we are eventually hurried out of the studio by the presenter acting on the cue of his/her producer about limited time, I would quickly wrap things up by adding “basically we are organizing an award night to recognize outstanding contributors to youth development”. Without a pause I finish by saying “we are giving the youths an opportunity to nominate their choice of candidate for the leadership awards. Viewers can please SMS their choice of candidate to this “number” from any network”. And then I finally hurry myself out of the harsh studio lights. I may or may not bother to alert the viewers that each text would cost them #100. The hidden charge would go into funding the dinner/award night. All of this is of course the third step.

All efforts would be put into making the award ceremony as impressive as possible but with care not to balloon the tight budget. The award night would also witness the launch of two books authored by me. With the titles; HOT PRINCIPLES OF LEADERSHIP and ADVANCED YOUTH LIFESTYLE SYNCHRONISM which are merely a “remix” of other books with similar titles or themes written by other authors. This sums up the fourth step.

I expect to pocket something in the neighborhood of #5million from all of these activities as it is only fitting for the recipients of my awards to present a token to the foundation to encourage a worthy cause.

If for any reason I fail to realize the expected returns, I will merely repeat steps 2-3 again the following year. I could even make the awards a biannual event. Moving its venue from state to state and city to city. When finally I hit my target and get “PAYed” for my troubles I will close down my N.G.O retire into quietness and open a deluxe unisex boutique. All five steps complete. In any case I never said I was running a non-profit I only claimed to be running a non-government organization.