You cannot light fire in another soul unless it is burning in your soul.

After two years of not seeing each other, I was pretty excited about meeting my friend and brother again @lordjames. I had to travel over 10 hours from Uyo to Abuja covering a distance of 414 miles and then the following day from Abuja to Akwanga, Northern central part of Nigeria with additional 83 miles just to meet with my long time friend and to embark on a philanthropic project with him, titled "Product of Help Initiative".

What Is the Project All About?

This project aims at providing help and support to people of all ages and backgrounds with a focus on children, teenagers and Nigerian serving corpers. The Project is intended to tackle the problem of unemployment amongst Nigerian serving corpers, by introducing them to Steemit and exposing them to the boundless opportunities that are available on Steemit, thus allowing them take the initiative of leveraging on these opportunities to attain financial freedom.

The Project also aims at providing free meals for children and young persons through steem, on the street who cannot afford it, as well as creating meaningful interactions with them to help discover their interest towards having a means of livelihood and help them acquire one through Steem.

Yesterday, myself and @lordjames actually met with Ishack on the street, a young boy about 12 years of age who just lost his dad recently. During our interactions with him, we found out that he has passion for tailoring, as he told us that before the demise of his dad, he had already promised to sponsor his training as a tailor.
We've taken it upon ourselves to sponsor his training. We were able to meet with Mr. Aminu, Who would be his tailoring instructor, to find our the cost of training and the cost of the materials and equipment he would need to enhance his training. Mr. Aminu appreciated our efforts and concern and said he would get back to us for feedback. He later gave us a phone call after making his list of necessary work items for Ishack, by thursday we will return to the shop to meet Ishack and his master to render support through the earnings we've made so far from Steemit.

**From L-R; @lordjames, Mr. Aminu, Ishack and myself, Just after the discussion

Why Are We Doing This?

PRODUCTS OF HELP INITIATIVE is a steem powered project initiative of @joshuaetim and @lordjames with the aim of providing support and affordable help of different forms to people who need it, with the ultimate goal of making the world a better place.
Why am I doing this?
As a Nigerian youth Corper serving in a remote village, Southern part of Nigeria, Delta state to be specific. I woke up everyday to see the numerous challenges faced by both students and teachers in the rural community schools; libraries with insufficient or no books, empty science laboratories, insufficient chairs and desks for students and teachers etc. Other days, I would weep as the entire educational system over there has been jeopardized by these challenges. I told myself, instead of sitting down to lament, I would embark on a Community Development Service (CDS) project, which I titled "BACK TO SCHOOL PROJECT" to see how to solve these problems by drawing the attention of the stakeholders in the educational sector and outside the educational sector to it.

With my platoon commandant, during my service year as a youth Corper

The Back To School Project

I wrote down the Project proposal, went through the different stages involved in getting a CDS project proposal approved, and finally I got it approved. After approval, I spent resources going to factories, companies, banks, offices, business establishments and even meeting with individuals to seek support for the project, but all to no avail.
Days passed by, weeks passed by, months passed by, I got no response. No positive feedback, no support!
I was discouraged, I was drained, I stopped trying. As I continued with the remnant days of my service year there and kept seeing those challenges, I felt almost defeated and promised myself that in the future when I make money, no matter how little or big, that I won't hesitate to help people when presented with the opportunity.
A part of me still remains in Delta wandering pending when I'll execute this particular project. I wish to go back there someday to see my dreams for that community come true.

We Are All Products Of Help

I recalled, when I was about writing my high school final exams and things going on smoothly, my parents couldn't afford my exams fee and things were really rough. My academic future was about to be jeopardized, but then, a family relative showed up (my uncle) and payed for my exams fee. I got help!

I remembered my 23rd birthday, I was in NYSC, and a "stranger friend" on facebook messages me and asked for my account number. I was surprised surprised, I had to ask him to check again if he sent the message to the right person, and he said yes. He later sent me money as Birthday gift. I needed financial support while I was in camp but I didn't know it would come from a total stranger. I got help!

I don't believe anyone is self-made, even on Steemit. We have been helped in different ways by different people at one point or the other in our life journey.
We are all PRODUCTS OF HELP.

Image source: pixabay

Why Should We Help Others?

We should help others because there's nothing beautiful in seeing people suffering. We should help, because our life wouldn't make sense without it. We should help because our heavenly Father commands us to do so.

What we do in life echoes in eternity.

We should help, because we will need help someday, if not us, our children would.

@joshuaetim and @lordjames discussing the way forward about the project

This project has started and will get better and bigger with more support, help and love.

I have been greatly and personally inspired by the works of @Surpassinggoogle, @damarth, @tarazkp, @abh12345, @ejemai, @futurethinker, @mitneb, @curie, @nairadaddy, @jerrybanfield @ocd and @stephenkendal towards giving back to the community and supporting others to grow.
And just today, @tarazkp has delegated about 1000 SP to random people to help grow and support people with undervalued contents.
You all and many others inspire me!

Our next visit will be to the hospitals and schools.

We will not fail to take advantage of any opportunity to help people. Thank you for reading.