Odoemena Augustine Chinonso of Teens Can Blog is Our #BellaNaijaMCM this Week!

For our #BellaNaijaMCM feature this week, we celebrate Odoemena Augustine Chinonso, the co-founder of Teens Can Blog, an organisation that is passionately committed to spurring technological innovation in young people.

Teens Can Blog was formed by a carefully curated team of web developers, engineers and interaction designers with a focus on developing the next generation with digital explorational skills.

The organisation equips young people in tertiary institutions, high schools and local communities with on-demand tech skills and mentoring to help them become experts and socially relevant by integrating their passion with technology.

“We took it upon ourselves to tackle the challenge of over-dependence on the government by changing undergraduates’ mentality towards success and self-dependence from our little community. We had only Abia State University as our space, and we began to run free courses for students on blogging, web development, public speaking and other skills that could fetch them a living,” Odoemena told Techpoint Africa in July, 2020.

After a successful first training session, Odoemena and his team decided to hold physical trainings. “We started reaching out to student communities, student heads, vice-chancellors, universities and high schools across Nigeria because we have a sophisticated team of experts in blogging, programming, digital marketing skills, public speaking, content writing, graphic design, communication skills, and the like, who work with us full-time to reach out to many people and ensure they are being mentored,” he explained.

Teens Can Blog succeeded in training over 500 people in the first 6 months of its establishment. Apart from its own training sessions, the platform helps companies and organisations to either train their staff, run an internship, or build a unique solution.

While the organisation equips young people with relevant skills, it also gives them the opportunity to become trainers themselves.

Odoemena holds a bachelors degree in Political Science and Government from Abia State University and has worked across several news and media platforms since 2015 before founding Teens Can Blog.

Teens Can Blog was one of the 200 digital startups selected for Forbes’ first Digital Startup Accelerator program in Nigeria.

We celebrate Odoemena and his team for building a platform to democratise digital skills for the future and we’re rooting for them!