“I got a job in an IT company in 2008 and later resumed for my HND, Part-Time. My first salary at the IT company was N10,000 but there was a problem – the salary was not enough to cater for my bills. Transport alone from home to work was about N300 per day; if you do the math, that’s N7500 per month. To save some money, I’d sometimes trek to Challenge or, take a cab to Aleshinloye, then trek again to Jericho where the office was. In the end, my mom stepped in – she decided to foot my transport.
People often saw me and merely because they knew I had a job, they thought I was a big boy. They had no idea the battles I was fighting inside. Work was a competitive space for me. I was the youngest in the office but I was willing to learn and go the extra mile. I will stay back in the office to learn when everyone was gone. Sometimes, I was in the office till 9pm and 10pm, yet be the first to arrive. In a year, my salary was increased and another year increased.
In 2010 into 2011, work became more challenging and intense. It was the period when I really asked myself: “who am I?” I kept pushing then in 2012, I found myself seeking ways to help young people like me to make critical decisions in their lives and to promote right values and ideals. I remember while growing up in the 90s that my father would drop us home and go back to the bus stop to pick people who might be headed to the direction of home. Sometimes, he did about ten rounds like that, carrying strangers from Challenge to Felele.
Those acts taught me what service to humanity was about. It taught me that it didn’t matter if anyone acknowledged or paid me for what I did for my society. It taught me to do well, not for the accolades. No one owed me, not even a thank you. I saw these top-notch values in my father and I sought to have more young people develop such; that was when I came up with the Youth-Minds Alignment and Development Centre, known as MAC.
In 2012 I had to do an IT training for a group of 300 level students from LAUTECH, about 30 of them. I was teaching certification programs that I had read and studied for by myself without being opportune to get the certification, because I didn’t have the money. It was in the course of training that I discovered that 85% of them didn’t even know what they wanted to do with themselves or what they were learning. I saw them as my younger ones and so I sat with them and began to counsel them. I began to ask them questions about what real life problems they wanted to solve and how they might be able to navigate real life. I did a lot of volunteering work in 2012-2013, going to schools, speaking, engaging students and helping them map out paths for themselves.
On July 30 2012, it was my birthday: I kicked off the MAC with a workshop on “Career and Relationships”. Also in 2014, I published a book, “Escape from Religion”, which took me 5 years to write and 3 different drafts, It sold over 200 paperback copies in the first two weeks. Amazingly, during the book lunch, only the back covers were ready, as I was not having money to do the prints. A friend said, “Only Tunde Vaughan would attempt a Book launch without the book. However, without book, people launched and I got over 120,000 Naira that day. That settled the money for prints. The thing is, people don’t do much because they wait till they have much, but much is there and we never get there till we leave here.
This period of my life tested me. I had responsibilities at work, at my church as PCC Secretary, and in my community, and I had to joggle all these together. My commitment to the society continued to grow and grow. I did a lot of reading and writing within that period of time. These responsibilities shaped me for who I am now. In 2015, I decided it was officially time to go public with MAC. By public I mean reaching out to people and making calls for people to come in and support us with MAC. Even though I was not a teacher, I was yet teaching students in MAC alongside other young, committed minds who had a flair for teaching.
In 2015, I was selected to be a part of African Leadership Academy camp in South Africa. It was a period of learning. I would stay awake reading in a cold weather, sometimes about 9 degrees till 11pm and yet be up by 4am. I was just willing to learn as much as I could. Being there in ALA was an opportunity that I wanted to maximize and I did. Everything I learned at ALA has continued to help in setting a standard of excellence for MAC.
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3 of 3 runs tomorrow.
