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While living in Princeton at the height of the pandemic, Adedayo Adebayo, MA(TS) ’21, started a nonprofit organization in his home country of Nigeria. The organization, called Build Greenies Learning Hub, provides tutoring and mentorship for kids who attend Nigeria’s underfunded public schools. ”Greenies” signifies plants in their early stages, small and tender but soon grow tall and strong as a result of proper monitoring and care.
That kind of growth, Adebayo says, is what he wants to make possible for the kids in the program. Adebayo was himself a “very fearful kid” whose life was changed by the encouragement of others. “The only thing that kept me moving,” he says, “were the people who stood by me.”
Adebayo knew before coming to Princeton Theological Seminary that he wanted to find a way to pass on that gift to other kids in Nigeria. But it was in Professor Kenda Dean’s youth ministry class that he was inspired not to wait for the perfect opportunity but to “just start something.”
With the help of a few Nigerian friends and his sister, who is a lawyer, Adebayo started building an organization from scratch. He was already familiar with the nonprofit world thanks to his field education internship at the Center for Public Justice, but starting something overseas was an entirely different task.
“It was just God,” Adebayo says of those early days of planning and paperwork. “God was working silently to show us that we [were] on the right path and [were] making progress.”
Because of the pandemic, Build Greenies started by sending mentors to work one-on-one with students in their homes. In addition to academic guidance, the mentors helped students find themselves in the story of Jesus Christ. It was a small start, but Adebayo says they “learned quickly to celebrate their little victories.”
One such victory was the journey of a 14-year-old boy who spoke of the fear and hopelessness he’d felt before joining the program. “I felt like there was no future for me,” the boy told his mentor, “but now I see a new reason to have hope for my future.”
It was stories like that that convinced Adebayo to move back to Nigeria to work on the ground with Build Greenies after he completed his MA(TS) program in 2021. After schools reopened, Adebayo and his team began to lead mentorship sessions with larger groups of kids. “They all have unique stories,” Adebayo says, “and they’re all amazing!”
Since then, the nonprofit’s programming has expanded in scope to further meet the needs of primary and secondary students in public schools. One ongoing initiative is public speaking training, where students develop skills to articulately discuss present-day issues affecting Nigeria. “Teenagers are smart, they can make sensible contributions. They can provide solutions to problems, their ideas are relevant,” Adebayo shares. Past topics for students to workshop speeches on have included Nigeria’s educational sector and policing in Nigeria. Videos from this initiative, called the 8teenlead project, can be viewed online.
Following a leadership seminar for students, Build Greenies launched a book club that meets each student at their particular reading level and provides suggested reading for more advanced materials. Their goal is to help students discern what they would like to do and provide practical guidance and tools to realize their ambitions. For those in need of financial assistance, the organization also offers sponsorship opportunities to ensure Build Greenies is a learning environment that enables all participants to meet their potential.
Similarly, the leadership club is a product of the leadership seminar. Participants of the seminar return to their immediate communities – their schools – to implement the problem-solving skills they have acquired, under the close guidance of Build Greenies’ volunteers. In their schools, the students identify a challenge and design a project to address that challenge. Their designed projects are implemented by Build Greenies’ team in the name of the participants after careful examination.
Build Greenies is also working to improve the living experiences of children in orphanage homes as well as the youths who age out of the homes. They have established a club for children in orphanages to discuss and share their passions.
Before he came to Princeton Seminary, one of Adebayo’s own mentors told him in the Yoruba language, “Eni to ba ma da so fun ni torun e laa ko wo” (Anyone who would give to others must have enough to present). Not only did this idea lead Adebayo to Seminary; it’s also at the heart of his work in Nigeria. Only with the support of others can we — in the words of Build Greenies’ mission statement — “find treasure in hidden places.”
