Meet Couple Taking Youths Off The Streets

How do you badge someone who is addicted to helping people, that’s the story of a couple that has been offering humanitarian services to Nigerian youths regardless of their ethnic, believes, background or tribe.

Dayo and Joke have been happily married for years, they both shared same interest in assisting the less privileged, hundreds of youths in Nigeria and across Africa have been affected positively through their gospel of equipping jobless youths with their needs to make ends meet.

numerous testimonies and news of their kind gestures towards humanity floods everywhere, appraisal by both old and young over their investiture to drive positive change in the society has been a force to compute with.

Famous journalist, Sean Polotee in a chat with Joke and Dayo stated that it is made known by the visionary couple that alleviation of poverty in Africa is truly possible.

Enjoy the excerpts…

Can we meet you both?

I am Adedayo Setro by name, an ex-banker, retired from banking at age 35. A serial entrepreneur fully based in fashion designing, shoe making, photography and videography, online content developer, story writer, youth motivational speaker and presently run a foundation called Setro’s Foundation our goal is to discover poor youths across Africa get them trained in crafts/skills of their choice, get them start up tools after their training and help create market for their products.

What about your madam?

I am Joke Setro, married to this visionary husband of mine with a propelling vision to put smiles on the faces of the African youths.

I am a graduate of Economics University of ILORIN. Am a fashion instructor and have trained over 65,000 people online via our YouTube channel (www.youtube.com/setrocraft), I have also been conducting empowerment training all the way back from my NYSC days where I trained women in soap making and they starting making a living with it etc.

I am also a fashion business consultant,
as a trained fashion entusiast on the numerous business models in fashion.

This is mind blowing, whose original idea was the whole concept and how did it all began?

Right before our marriage my husband used to tell me how he is so passionate about living as a gift to others. He would say, he has a gift of help.

He shared an idea with me in 2019 that we should sell our last property (2 shops in costain market called Ademuyiwa market) and use the money to host an empowerment program to help those youths in fashion and food related businesses tagged African Fashion & Food Expo (AFFE2019) with free display of product and runway all for free.

It sounds crazy because then we were experiencing our greatest challenge in the family but I have confidence in his choice of action and I gave him a yes and it was wonderful to see how many Youths we brought together and exposed to the platform of success as some of them are now running businesses of their own in fashion and food till date.

We gave them everything for free yet nobody sponsored us. BOI and Sterling Bank was fully represented at the event. But all the financing was by us and the reward is that we changed lives.

But as my husband is, we wanted to do a version 2 of the event last year but COVID hindered us and during the COVID lock down we lost our baby and that melted us because we had to queue up at the bank to get money to take her to the hospital but she was confirmed dead on arrival.

We promised to do something to help youths and other young families to prevent them from pains associated with income flow because if we were that rich we would have been able to have money in another account that the ATM was working instead of queing up to withdraw from the only account we keep our family savings.

So he just came on air and announced that we are going to be helping youths get trained and buy machines for them and I gave him a YES and told him the vision I saw about a project like that where we shall be training the poor for free while the rich will pay to get trained.

That really helped us to shift our attention from our pain to the pain of others and we even adopted a Quadruplets (4babies) as God would have it we now have a baby boy today.

So, it has always been my husband with some crazy ideas and push but I always help him fine-tune his vision and help keep tab on it.

For example he made me go into fashion and I never worked for anyone till date because he ensured I get trained in multiple places and here I am today.

This is so inspiring, how long has this Foundation been operating and how many lives can we say have been affected?

The foundation started last year May 2020 by the virtue of the help we give on our YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/setrosvlog but we became registered this year precisely April 8th 2021 and we have impacted about 60 youths.

There are online video evidences of the youths we exposed to the power of social media and we help display their fashion products for free and gave them the right push to go outside the world and explore. Presently some of them are now on TV channels and doing great.

Even though we ourselves have never been to the TV stations before but we are glad to be a catalyst of these vibrant youths because that is so awesome.

What are the scope you apply in detecting who really needs help and who just want to take advantage of the platform?

We don’t just believe anything. We travel down to villages, shanties, poor neighbourhood, do impromptu video calls, talk with families or guardian to be sure they really are poor and in need of help. And even at that, we don’t give them any money but pay directly to their trainers whom we must have done a video call with to confirm authenticity. And we monitor their training activities on periodically/weekly basis via videos and report it on our YouTube channel

And we also warn them ahead that if they lie to us we shall publish their videos with a caption on fraud.

We also make them do a video request before grants can be given. By this, some whose parents can afford it will tell you they don’t want to do a video request for help, so we know they don’t need the help because when a man is poor he has nothing to hide or brag about. All he need is help to get to the point called success.

So far, we have only recorded only 2 defaulters, out of about 60 beneficiaries

Hope they’ve been brought to book?

We did a video report on them on our channel and everyone saw their faces and how they defaulted.

What enacted the idea of equipping jobless nigerian youths with aquisition skills?

Because of the numerous environment that I have lived in where I saw large numbers of youths take to crime, fraud, prostitution and early marriages not because they wanted to end their lives in such ways but because of basic needs they were not able to make in their lives.

Also the increase in the number of youths trying to walk out of the African boarder in search of greener pastures that are nowhere. If only they have skill/crafts that would keep them gainfully engaged.

Another set are in the foreign country and currently complaining that they are slaving while craftsmen are well rewarded for their skills.

Are there any returns you look forward to benefitting from these gestures?

Yes please:

1. At least One million youths that can have their success story linked to the foundation we have created.
2. It will paint my name in the world record of a young man who changed the narratives of present day slavery of African youths under white collar jobs, for craftsmanship & expandable trade in Africa as a tool for economic independence
3. It will also open doors of help for my children & generations to come because in helping others, the universe will always recycle help for me too.

Some of these our programs can be spotted online via

AFFE 2019-. https://instagram.com/freyvouritefoods?utm_medium=copy_link

How do you get financial supports to fund these projects?

We started with the little we have and a family friend supported us and some of our subscribers supported us and we presently just set up a GoFundMe page, and account number for the foundation was recently opened 2 weeks ago, we also have PayPal account as follows…

Account Details: Setros Foundation
Naira Account: 0084387380
Dollar Account: 0084387892
Bank Name: Sterling Bank Plc.

GoFundMe Page: https://gofund.me/e7425cd9
See some of our projects here:
https://www.setrosfo

Any expectation of partnership with private sectors, government or any financial institution?

Yes sir, we really would like to partner with individuals, private sectors, government and financial institutions to expand our reach towards direct reaching out to large numbers of youths out there without any means of support to actualize there dream in learning a craft or skill that would definitely take them to the position of success they have always dreamt of so that we can reduce the growing number of insecurity/restlessness, unemployment and fraudulent practices and to do these we need partners to help fund the training and purchase of start up kits for these youths in numerous crafts that they are interested in.

They can decide to use us to achieve their CSR projects as we intend going from villages to villages, rural, undeveloped/neglected places to bring light of hope to these youths.

What they get in return is free brand awareness/adverts and some times we can even go into content creation for their products publicity/adverts.

We need organizations that can do the following for us:

1. Take care of our travel & hotel expenses/cost
2. Purchase of start up machines/equipments
3. Free feeding of the poor at some periodic festivals e.g Xmas, New Year, Muslim festivals
4. Feed the school children program we are planning for some backward community in Ilasamaja (under pipeline)
5. Purchase of training equipments for our foundation training can also be found online.

How many states in nigeria or other parts of africa have you affected with your programs?

Lagos, Ibadan, Abeokuta, ILORIN, Badagry, Benin Republic, Imo, Oyo state, Edo, Kastina and Two are to kick up in Ghana and Togo by next quarter.

We already have our representative in Togo and Ghana waiting for us to send them project startup funds. But because of our training hub presently being set up we had to sold on to the little funds we have to take care of things such as fixing of hair and barbing, photography and videography at the training hub.

Is this something you intend doing for some period of time or a continuous program?

Till death. And my generation continues with it. Already training my children to give back to the society and even the beneficiaries must replicate the same help to atleast 3poor youths when they are stabilized

As we speak, we have lots of things pending that must be gotten before Saturday and am ready to sell my Camry to get it done than to live a life without impact

Very soon, countries of the world will be inviting us to replicate the model for them because it will recreate the minds of African Youth away from just paper certificate into what they love to do and CAN do.

Are you saying Africans should disregard western education?

No, but should restructure it to suit our needs which is what I call an African Centric System of Education where craft or skill of choice should be trained from primary schools and up unto higher institutions if the youth so wished to go that far e.g my 1st daughter started showing signs of craftmanship in working with papers and now she is making flowery designs for the house and some church members and I can tell you that she now directs her own short dual role movie – written and edited by her and she is going to join the training for videography and photography and if she ever finds herself in university she must study exactly the kind of art that applies to what she is loving and she can never have the mind to use the certificate to work for salary.

People are already paying for her artwork at age 9. imagine where she will be at age 19. But I really want youths that are purely artisans in nature to get to the pinnacle of success even without going to study theory in the university

We should not over celebrate theory whereas Nigeria’s problem is practical – we need produces not Professors without productive capabilities. Study china as an example.

What are the future plans you have in mind to add up to this programs and how do you intend to easily achieve them?

1. Get a permanent structure where these youths will be trained for free and their products shipped globally to improve the balance of trade in Nigeria and other African countries.
2. Set up a free home for youths to stay till they get their feet after training and empowerment.
3. Set up food Bank in Nigeria & Other African Countries.
4. Set up A Free Medical Hospital for Youths to practice medicine after we have helped trained them.
5. Set up regional offices across Nigeria and other African countries.

To achieve all these, the foundation will be run in such a way to generate inflow for expansion and NOT to totally depend on aids or grants.

Any word of advise for wandering youths out there?

Please they should just try to reach out to us for help on whatever crafts or skills they would love to learn by going to our YouTube channel to subscribe and place their request via comment on any video; stating exactly what they want.

We shall reach out to them and guide them through the free process of accessing our support.

Any special program, specifically designed for our females such as the widows, single moms and our ladies in general aside the regular benefits your organization render to both gender?

We have Xmas program for training the girl child and supporting the widows at Xmas

We look forward to feeding between 200 to 500 families this Xmas as against over 100 families that we did last year.

Thanks for your time, we will keep our fingers crossed to watch as your plans to create a better society for our youth unfolds.

Thank you so much Sir.