What we talked about
In this thought-provoking episode, we have the privilege of hosting John Onuigbo, a true pioneer in the world of education and social entrepreneurship. John is not your typical educator. He’s a visionary, an innovator, and a force for positive change. As the CEO and co-founder of Foris Labs, he embarked on a remarkable journey in the midst of a pandemic to address one of the most pressing educational challenges facing vulnerable communities. Foris Labs, a virtual science laboratory brand, empowers students with the ability to transform any space into a science laboratory through experiment simulations. It’s an idea that’s not only groundbreaking but also vital, especially in times when access to physical laboratories is limited. In recognition of its impact, Foris Labs was named one of the top three edtech startups in Nigeria by the Global Edtech Startup Awards in both 2021 and 2022. In 2022, John was also recognized as one of the Top 20 young African entrepreneurs by the Regional Universities Forum (RUFORUM), solidifying his status as a trailblazer in the field. Join us for an episode that explores the intersection of education, innovation, and social impact. John’s journey is a testament to what’s possible when passion and purpose converge, and we’re excited to share his story with you.
Show notes
Building a virtual science lab during a pandemic is one thing. Sustaining it, and proving it works, in markets where students are accessing experiments on a phone because there is no laptop at home, is another. John Onuigbo has been doing both since 2020, and his story reveals how constrained environments can sharpen the design of educational tools.
What we covered
- John launched Foris Labs after realizing that if classes could move virtual during COVID-19, there was no reason science labs couldn’t too, and that no major player was filling that gap in West Africa.
- The simulation software enforces experimental procedure step by step: students cannot advance if they use the wrong proportions, which shifts teacher feedback from process errors to outcome analysis.
- The planned next version of the product separates a guided curriculum mode from an open sandbox mode, giving students room to experiment freely, including the “what if I mix the wrong things” curiosity that drives engagement.
- Before Foris Labs, John ran a coding and robotics school for high schools, where he paired technical instruction with an entrepreneurship track explicitly teaching students how to turn skills into income and social enterprises.
- At one all-girls school, fewer than 1% of students historically chose engineering fields; after years of working with John’s program, students began entering computer engineering and software engineering in meaningful numbers.
- John’s measure of success is the ripple effect: a student who competed in a global entrepreneurship competition, won a scholarship and a laptop, enrolled in computer engineering, and then returned to teach younger students how to code.
About John Onuigbo
John is the CEO and co-founder of Foris Labs, a virtual science laboratory platform recognized as a top three edtech startup in Nigeria by the Global Edtech Startup Awards in 2021 and 2022. He is also a classroom teacher, curriculum builder, and a 2022 Top 20 Young African Entrepreneur honoree by RUFORUM who has worked directly with Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Education on STEM initiatives.
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnonuigbo1
- Website: https://forislabs.com
Episode 2 of the PreVetted Podcast.
Full transcript
[00:00:00:07 - 00:00:23:39] Federico Ramallo Welcome to the Irregular Expression podcast, also known as IrregEx. Our primary goal is to delve deeper into the experiences and stories of our guests. We uncover their insights we aim to understand, learn, and subsequently share these invaluable lessons with our larger community. Each episode is an opportunity for both us and our listeners to gain knowledge and grow together in our collective wisdom.
[00:00:24:41 - 00:00:57:36] Federico Ramallo Through Irregular Expressions, we’re building a repository of wisdom, and reaching the community with shared knowledge from leaders and innovators from different diverse walks of life. This podcast is sponsored by Density Labs, the number one top IT staff augmentation service company. If you can dream it, we can code it. Today, our guest is John Onugbo. I hope I’m pronouncing it correctly, John. Nice to meet you, my pleasure. Nice to have you here.
[00:00:59:03 - 00:01:00:23] John Onuigbo Yeah, it’s a pleasure being here.
[00:01:00:23 - 00:01:03:30] Federico Ramallo So tell us a little bit about yourself.
[00:01:06:44 - 00:01:18:39] John Onuigbo Yeah, I like to describe myself as that classroom teacher who uses technology to change students’ learning experiences.
[00:01:19:42 - 00:01:22:02] John Onuigbo I mean, growing up in Nigeria, for me,
[00:01:23:17 - 00:01:27:13] John Onuigbo I felt like as a science student, growing up in Nigeria, I felt like science was boring.
[00:01:28:27 - 00:01:51:30] John Onuigbo And that made learning difficult for me. And so since after high school, I’ve really focused my life on building technologies and just making education for children, worked as a classroom teacher, built a coding school for schools, right now for his labs, and also spent some of my time working with the Federal Ministry of Education in Nigeria to implement
[00:01:52:55 - 00:02:05:17] John Onuigbo ADB to create a club for students in Nigeria. I think that’s it. Outside that, when I’m not working on my startups, I’m volunteering with a couple of nonprofits working in education and healthcare spaces.
[00:02:06:22 - 00:02:09:16] Federico Ramallo Interesting. So I met John at TechCrunch.
[00:02:10:26 - 00:02:13:01] Federico Ramallo This was last week. It was a great experience.
[00:02:13:01 - 00:02:13:13] John Onuigbo Yeah.
[00:02:13:13 - 00:02:16:45] Federico Ramallo That’s how I met.
[00:02:18:24 - 00:02:22:50] Federico Ramallo And you had a booth there, right? You were one of the finalists of the competition, right?
[00:02:24:02 - 00:02:28:47] John Onuigbo Yeah, we are one of the finalists for the SADOP battles here at 200. Great.
[00:02:28:47 - 00:02:33:07] Federico Ramallo Great. So tell us a little bit about how was that experience?
[00:02:36:34 - 00:03:00:47] John Onuigbo I think I would describe TechCrunch disrupt as the biggest stage for startup entrepreneurs and who are just looking to take their businesses global. The experience was amazing because we had a lot of people ranging from enterprise adopters, investors, users,
[00:03:01:50 - 00:03:03:08] John Onuigbo stopping by our stand,
[00:03:04:10 - 00:03:13:26] John Onuigbo just like talking about the shop partnerships, collaboration and stuff. It was a great experience outside that. I also had a lot of fun just meeting new people.
[00:03:13:26 - 00:03:15:13] Federico Ramallo Yeah. Right. Right.
[00:03:17:50 - 00:03:23:02] Federico Ramallo And you also won the stand for award, right?
[00:03:24:17 - 00:03:24:35] John Onuigbo Yeah.
[00:03:26:00 - 00:03:26:57] Federico Ramallo How was that?
[00:03:28:23 - 00:03:33:31] Federico Ramallo How did you get to win that award? That must be an amazing story, right?
[00:03:35:18 - 00:03:56:21] John Onuigbo Yeah. So I applied for the competition in 2020, the Stanford Lland UB Design Challenge 2020 when the pandemic started and schools were shut down. And then I was still an undergraduate student struggling to get done with university. I applied by co-founder
[00:03:57:36 - 00:04:01:19] John Onuigbo for the opportunity in December of 2020, just on the deadline.
[00:04:03:15 - 00:04:09:29] John Onuigbo And by January, we announced as one of the top eight global finalists in the competition.
[00:04:10:32 - 00:04:25:33] John Onuigbo And we had to do like the final presentation and voila, we had a global prize winners. It was an amazing experience. That got me to Stanford, took some classes at Stanford, graduate school of business,
[00:04:26:48 - 00:04:38:31] John Onuigbo met people and just experienced the whole Silicon Valley text of it. Yeah. It was a great exposure. Right. Right.
[00:04:41:09 - 00:04:51:02] Federico Ramallo So tell us a little bit about what are your plans for this year, for the following 12 months or so, what are you planning to achieve?
[00:04:51:02 - 00:04:55:32] John Onuigbo Personally or startup wise?
[00:04:56:58 - 00:04:57:10] Federico Ramallo Both.
[00:04:58:44 - 00:05:46:41] John Onuigbo Oh, okay. So my goal right now, what I’m currently working on with my team at First Labs is to get expanding to new markets, first of all, to conquer the West African market and then dive deeper into the Southeast Asian market, Latin America, basically expansion and also increasing the number of the amount of content we have on our platform, building up more simulations and stuff. Yeah. We are also currently raising our pre-seed round and something we hope to close soon. Yeah. I think that’s basically it. Right.
[00:05:47:52 - 00:05:57:15] Federico Ramallo Right. Interesting. I think I mentioned to you last time that I should send you more information about the remote schools in Mexico, right?
[00:05:58:20 - 00:06:01:14] Federico Ramallo So that’s something I have still pending to do. Yeah.
[00:06:03:09 - 00:06:09:46] Federico Ramallo Because they have these virtual rooms where, you know, your product may be a good fit.
[00:06:10:59 - 00:06:17:30] Federico Ramallo Sure. Let’s do that. Yeah. And hopefully that helps you on, you know, expansion to Latin, right?
[00:06:17:30 - 00:06:18:54] John Onuigbo Yeah. Yeah.
[00:06:18:54 - 00:06:20:57] Federico Ramallo Yeah. Great.
[00:06:22:26 - 00:06:31:34] Federico Ramallo Tell us a little bit more about your virtual science laboratory. That was your,
[00:06:33:00 - 00:06:35:45] Federico Ramallo that was a problem that you were pitching on the floor, right?
[00:06:37:00 - 00:06:37:12] John Onuigbo Yeah.
[00:06:38:42 - 00:07:05:12] John Onuigbo So as I said earlier, growing up as a science student in Nigeria and also like not attending one of the biggest, most expensive schools, learning was hard because we just had to consume a lot of science content theoretically without understanding how they applied like to real life and how that can help our careers or how we can just help the world with those information.
[00:07:06:22 - 00:07:17:51] John Onuigbo And so what it looked like was a dream exams. I had like memorized chemistry, jaggles, beach, IUPAC, nomenclature and stuff, and still struggled to like achieve a distinction in those examinations.
[00:07:20:28 - 00:07:28:04] John Onuigbo So after I left school, I was just looking for ways to like make change the way students interact with science content.
[00:07:29:27 - 00:07:59:13] John Onuigbo And it never happened until 2020 when school starts shuts down. So I was, they did some of my students from my coding school to know how the family was affecting their learning. And they shared with me that learning had become harder because the learning via Zoom, they can’t do practicals and we are stopped. So we thought at that point, this is the right time, right? So we thought if classes could move virtual, why not labs?
[00:08:00:14 - 00:08:29:27] John Onuigbo And we did a research. I happen to be, there is currently no big player doing that in the West African market. And that was how we launched out for his labs. And that was how we launched out for his labs to give students the power to convert their mobile phones, their desktops into science laboratories by offering gamified simulations. So what it looks like is that students are able to like move beakers in the lab or not science experiment and still get the same results they would get or even better.
[00:08:30:41 - 00:08:39:04] John Onuigbo You do have to perform the experiments physically in real life. So yeah, that’s what we are doing at first labs.
[00:08:40:22 - 00:08:53:43] Federico Ramallo Right. Right. I found that, you know, I don’t know if you can do the name of the product right now, but I found that when I saw it was very interesting, a very interesting idea. Yeah.
[00:08:54:51 - 00:08:58:43] John Onuigbo Yeah. Thank you so much. I’m glad you find that interesting. Yeah.
[00:09:00:10 - 00:09:02:41] John Onuigbo I can’t do it because I don’t have the option to share my screen.
[00:09:03:42 - 00:09:03:54] John Onuigbo Right.
[00:09:05:12 - 00:09:07:04] Federico Ramallo Yes. Yes. I understand.
[00:09:08:28 - 00:09:12:23] Federico Ramallo But basically the, you know, being able to play with the, you know,
[00:09:13:27 - 00:09:19:02] Federico Ramallo yeah, with the materials and, you know, yeah, making a mess without making a mess.
[00:09:21:42 - 00:09:23:27] John Onuigbo You get that. Yes.
[00:09:27:54 - 00:09:34:30] Federico Ramallo Yes. I was wondering if, you know, what happens if you mix the wrong components? Do you get it, you know, an explosion?
[00:09:37:02 - 00:11:06:33] John Onuigbo Yeah. So invest in the first version of the product, we allow that to happen. But we don’t think that that’s somehow like hampered learning process because at the end of the day, all I wanted to achieve was hopefully students to like make the best out of what they’re learning in class. So right now in our period right now, in fact, you can’t, if you don’t get your proportions right, for example, we are supposed to take like 25 ml of, of hydrogen chloride, and then you’re taking 30 ml. You wouldn’t allow you the way it’s done. It wouldn’t like this. The system wouldn’t allow you to go over to the next step. You have to correct everything and get it right. So we are just like that, you’re saying is to try the classroom by your side to help you get things right. So you’ve done it wrong. Oh, this is wrong. You have to do it this way. And if you don’t do it the right way, you can’t move to the next step. If not, it becomes very, very hard because students is almost unable to like retrace or track where their errors came from. So that also helps the students. So towards the end of the experiment, instead of, you know, boggling or fighting to like get corrections on the process of conducting the experiments, they’re getting corrections on the outcome, their results, their outputs, what they did wrong in their calculations, what they did wrong in filing their report, their observation, their inference
[00:11:07:43 - 00:11:15:51] John Onuigbo and stuff. So the students are less bothered at the end of the day. So they just focus on one thing at a time. Yeah.
[00:11:15:51 - 00:11:19:08] Federico Ramallo Right. Right. So basically, you have to provide, you know,
[00:11:20:10 - 00:11:27:03] Federico Ramallo you have to give them an environment where they work towards a specific goal that you set up. Right. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:11:27:03 - 00:11:27:30] John Onuigbo Yeah.
[00:11:27:30 - 00:11:46:11] Federico Ramallo You have to be able to give this sensation of freedom, but at the same time, the guidance. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Yes. And they have some, you know, they have some space for exploration, but, but they, you know, but it’s limited. Right. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:11:46:11 - 00:12:04:59] John Onuigbo So yeah. So a part of our plan for the next version of the product is that so we’re going to have the T-ed labs where students are able to conduct experiments according to their curriculum and then you open up where they can just go and make it met how they want to do it. So I think the system for our right currently. Yeah. So just like trying to separate it.
[00:12:04:59 - 00:12:16:49] Federico Ramallo Yes. Because it’s like kids wants to explore the edges of the world. Right. So what happens if I do this, would it blow up? Right. Yeah. Yeah. And that kind of, you know,
[00:12:17:58 - 00:12:33:35] Federico Ramallo those type of things is what gets the kids more engaged. You know, like, Hey, I did this and, you know, it melted the floor or whatever. Right. Yeah. The craziest, you know, craziest experiments, right. Things that you can, you know, you cannot do safely in real life. Right.
[00:12:33:35 - 00:12:34:38] John Onuigbo Yeah.
[00:12:34:38 - 00:12:50:44] Federico Ramallo Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But then at the same time, you have to guide them, you know, like, hey, remember we have, you know, we’re doing this stuff, right. So it’s, yes, I have an eight year old, so I can, yeah, I understand that that thing. Yeah.
[00:12:50:44 - 00:12:51:12] John Onuigbo Yeah.
[00:12:52:32 - 00:12:57:09] Federico Ramallo So I leave him a little bit to explore and then I, I will him back, you know.
[00:12:59:37 - 00:13:10:46] Federico Ramallo Yeah. Which is the way to go. Yes. Yes. It’s kind of like, like fishing, you know, you have to let go of the fish and then reel it back. And then, you know, if you push too hard, the break line breaks. Right. Yeah.
[00:13:10:46 - 00:13:11:34] John Onuigbo Yeah.
[00:13:13:02 - 00:13:13:59] John Onuigbo Yeah. Yeah.
[00:13:15:23 - 00:13:24:11] Federico Ramallo Excellent. Excellent. So remind me what funding stage are you on the on, on, on this, on, on the forest labs project.
[00:13:26:11 - 00:13:26:55] John Onuigbo Funding stage.
[00:13:27:59 - 00:13:28:19] John Onuigbo Yes.
[00:13:29:41 - 00:13:32:36] John Onuigbo Okay. Well, it was not pretty ground. Yeah.
[00:13:32:36 - 00:13:34:27] Federico Ramallo Great.
[00:13:35:29 - 00:13:37:18] Federico Ramallo And are you looking for additional funding?
[00:13:42:29 - 00:13:47:47] John Onuigbo So all the funding we are looking for is in the round. So we see how space for investors.
[00:13:48:51 - 00:13:50:31] John Onuigbo Yeah. Right. Yeah.
[00:13:51:54 - 00:13:57:13] John Onuigbo Right. So like, not like we’ve closed the round with no close around. Right. Just at that reason.
[00:13:57:13 - 00:14:03:33] Federico Ramallo Yeah. Right. So if any investor hears, here’s the podcast, please, you know, reach out to John.
[00:14:05:08 - 00:14:10:02] Federico Ramallo Sure. Excellent. Excellent. I also see you started STEM novel, right?
[00:14:10:02 - 00:15:09:45] John Onuigbo I said the novel before forest labs, I said some of the way and I think that was my first year of undergraduate school. I just left school. I told you my whole life is about making educational fun for children. So when I was working as, as a classroom teacher, when I left school, I took up a, before I entered university, I took up a classroom teaching job in my, at my institution where I just completed my high school from. And while I was doing that, I was looking for a way to like, you know, just inspire students to stay in the sciences, increase the number of students, you know, like going into like STEM courses in the school. And I thought, okay, coding robotics could be a great idea. And I sent my first coding class in the school, we just like two students and my friends too. I was in my co-founder at the point.
[00:15:11:25 - 00:15:26:30] John Onuigbo And boom, the number grew. We noticed that, you know, parents are ready to pay for that. And that was how we set them level to help students to, to help students to be able to, you know,
[00:15:27:46 - 00:15:50:59] John Onuigbo learn coding and robotics while in school. On the other hand, we work with schools, we don’t work with individual parents, by the way. So helping schools to include coding and robotics and entrepreneurship in their curriculum, because it’s not part of the curriculum. So we developed a coding curriculum with my co-founder, Kiryane, and we’ve been running that project in schools for years right now. Yeah.
[00:15:52:06 - 00:15:54:23] Federico Ramallo Interesting. So you’re also, you know, so from,
[00:15:55:41 - 00:16:03:32] Federico Ramallo from being a teacher, you start expanding the curriculum, right? Yeah. And you started to add entrepreneurship into the curriculum. Yeah.
[00:16:05:02 - 00:16:08:43] Federico Ramallo Interesting. How do you add entrepreneurship through robotics?
[00:16:08:43 - 00:16:42:01] John Onuigbo Yeah. So what we do is, so there are three courses that we offer, coding, robotics, and entrepreneurship. Right. So coding and robotics, students are learning the hard skills and entrepreneurship. We are teaching them how to make money out of those skills, how to market those skills, how to build startups, how to build social innovation out of those skills. So what happens at the end of the day is that students don’t just acquire skills, they start learning to build social enterprises from a very young age. Right.
[00:16:42:01 - 00:16:43:32] Federico Ramallo Right. Interesting.
[00:16:44:42 - 00:16:48:13] Federico Ramallo Interesting. And what do you like to, you know,
[00:16:49:28 - 00:16:53:18] Federico Ramallo what do we like your students to achieve through your programs?
[00:16:53:18 - 00:18:02:25] John Onuigbo I think you’re really achieving that. One is that we’ve aggressively increased the number of student retention in STEM courses. We’ve also increased the number of students, pushing STEM programs, like in high schools and even up to university level. For example, we are checking out, it’s good that we worked with, we are checking with them, none of the students, it was like an all-year school. Many of the students are usually going to like medicine and stuff, not engineering fields. The number of the students who went into engineering field was less than 1%. But what happened within years of working with this female school? A lot of our students were going to computer engineering, software engineering, computer science, and stuff like that. And those of them who didn’t get the opportunity of going to the university immediately, because their parents are poor, took up internship roles, learning stuff like product management, product design, and stuff. So for me, that’s enough satisfaction. The fact that students are inspired to pursue STEM careers, careers in engineering, especially women,
[00:18:03:33 - 00:18:44:32] John Onuigbo and also building like social enterprises. I think that’s amazing. Our type four is SLAPS. I also provide like students who run like social enterprises, built out of social innovations, like products they build while on our program. So we help them to keep those projects alive. And yeah, that’s essentially. So for me, it’s amazing. So retention in the sciences, increase number of students going to the sciences, and also find a way of inspiring these students to persistent careers that they’ve thought they should build innovations out of their skills and help their community grow. Right.
[00:18:45:42 - 00:18:45:54] John Onuigbo Right.
[00:18:45:54 - 00:18:53:55] Federico Ramallo So the first thing you’re trying to achieve is inspire people to first become entrepreneur,
[00:18:55:53 - 00:19:00:46] Federico Ramallo for them to be empowered to be able to change their community. Yeah.
[00:19:02:12 - 00:19:13:25] Federico Ramallo And the other one is inspire them to join the engineering careers. Yeah. Yes. That’s something very interesting.
[00:19:14:45 - 00:19:42:05] Federico Ramallo The engineering is a great way to learn the skills, to change the world in a much more profound way. Because you’re building machines or products or solutions, or whether it’s software, hardware, you name it, right? Yeah. It has a much more profound impact, right? And if they come with this mindset of entrepreneurship,
[00:19:43:19 - 00:19:47:54] Federico Ramallo then wow, you know, they can really change the world.
[00:19:48:57 - 00:20:08:13] Federico Ramallo Amazing. Amazing. Thank you. Great. I relate a lot with a lot of the things that you’re saying. I’m coming from Argentina. I’m living in Mexico. So, you know, I see a lot of kids that they don’t have a clear path of mindset for growth, basically, right?
[00:20:09:22 - 00:20:25:59] Federico Ramallo Their vision of the world is very small, right? So I find very inspiring your story about teaching kids how to grow their vision of the world, right?
[00:20:25:59 - 00:20:27:06] John Onuigbo Yeah.
[00:20:28:23 - 00:20:39:18] John Onuigbo I mean, it’s amazing too, because generally around the world, it’s a problem with children having a lot of content to consume right now.
[00:20:40:25 - 00:21:14:27] John Onuigbo I think it’s a lot. There is a lot of content to consume online on social media and stuff. So we also need to be able to like, share that those children are able to use like the internet as a tool for good. We are seeing this such as cyber crime, phishing and stuff like that. But like, I think those students, like those young people who get involved in those crimes, they got to know that, oh, there is something they can still do the world good through those media that are using to like do the world bad and still be rich and be good for themselves.
[00:21:15:47 - 00:21:48:06] John Onuigbo I think the number would really decrease. So that’s what basically my philosophy is about. Catch the students very young, teach them to use social media to learn, use social media to make money without ripping out of their hard-earned wealth through cyber crime and stuff and fraud, internet fraud and stuff. I think we can change that narrative. It’s not just in Africa. It’s also in the emerging markets, just like you see it, like in Mexico and Argentina and stuff. So if you continue to work one step at the time, I believe the world is going to get there. It’s just a matter of time. Right.
[00:21:48:06 - 00:21:52:41] Federico Ramallo I was reading that in Mexico,
[00:21:53:48 - 00:21:59:09] Federico Ramallo the fifth employer, the number five employer in Mexico, is the organized crime.
[00:22:00:52 - 00:22:02:15] Federico Ramallo Wow. Yes.
[00:22:03:56 - 00:22:11:30] Federico Ramallo So what I find interesting is all the knowledge is there. Right.
[00:22:12:41 - 00:22:19:44] Federico Ramallo A lot of universities are opening their knowledge. You can go to the MIT,
[00:22:20:50 - 00:22:25:17] Federico Ramallo many others, and you can basically get all the courses. You can watch them.
[00:22:28:12 - 00:22:53:45] Federico Ramallo So the knowledge is out there. It’s easily accessible. The thing is, if you’re never motivated or get to the point where you’re motivated, interested in digesting that knowledge, then it is available to everybody. But at the same time,
[00:22:54:49 - 00:22:55:50] Federico Ramallo for cultural reasons,
[00:22:56:50 - 00:23:07:47] Federico Ramallo our kids are not interested in getting there. Right. So I think that your effort is actually changing that. Right.
[00:23:09:35 - 00:23:10:53] Federico Ramallo And piercing through that,
[00:23:11:55 - 00:23:40:04] Federico Ramallo making it a cultural change where they can get to the place where they can, whether they go to normal college or they go to, you know, they follow this online knowledge, whatever it is. Right. But to get them to the point where they can actually read and, you know, to be interested to learn about whether it’s engineering or higher knowledge,
[00:23:41:38 - 00:23:46:20] Federico Ramallo I think that has a significant impact in the world.
[00:23:48:04 - 00:23:49:42] John Onuigbo Very true.
[00:23:50:54 - 00:24:20:40] John Onuigbo I agree. I agree with you, Fedrico. I think the change happens in this cycle, and it’s just so beautiful. You impact one child, and the child who is inspired gets inspired to inspire another child. And the cycle just continues to grow. Mr. A tells B, B tells C, C tells D, and then that’s right. Yeah. Right.
[00:24:20:40 - 00:24:34:35] Federico Ramallo Yeah. It is a cultural change that takes, you know, takes time to do. But yeah, but it is very, very fascinating to see, to see it unfold. Yes. And to be part of it.
[00:24:34:35 - 00:24:35:45] John Onuigbo Right.
[00:24:37:10 - 00:25:01:25] John Onuigbo I think that’s the most fulfilling thing, being part of that change. It’s amazing. Because at the end of the day, when you begin to account the number of people you’ve impacted on their lives, you’ve helped shape their future and stuff, like it’s just so, I think nothing is more fulfilling than that. Nothing.
[00:25:01:25 - 00:25:03:11] Federico Ramallo Yes. Yes, I agree.
[00:25:05:41 - 00:25:06:34] Federico Ramallo Do you have a,
[00:25:07:35 - 00:25:12:43] Federico Ramallo what is the best story that you have for a student that you can share with us?
[00:25:15:25 - 00:25:15:37] John Onuigbo Yeah.
[00:25:16:49 - 00:25:31:18] John Onuigbo So yes, I have, I have, I have this girl in that just close, telling me, I made this young girl who is super, super brilliant, but
[00:25:32:38 - 00:25:39:08] John Onuigbo her parents, like she comes from a very humble background. Like her parents could barely be her school fees and stuff.
[00:25:40:31 - 00:25:44:51] John Onuigbo But one time notice about this young girl is that when we started the coding program in her school,
[00:25:46:21 - 00:26:03:05] John Onuigbo she was one of, because it takes a lot of time to get students to actually really become interested in the coding program, especially girls, because first of all, you just talk to them about the impact of it. It’s not easy. There are small students from the animal class who are scheduled to doing something extra curricular that’s also technical.
[00:26:04:08 - 00:26:12:56] John Onuigbo So this girl was one of the most serious ones in the program. She would, you know, get involved, always be on time for classes and stuff.
[00:26:14:13 - 00:28:04:41] John Onuigbo And also during holiday, she would tell me, oh, I don’t have a laptop. My parents don’t have a laptop, but I have a phone. How are we able to like boost on the continuing during holiday? Then I would tell her she would actually come over to one of our resource centers where we would continue to groom the girl. So, but what happened in change in one training, one, there was a global entrepreneurship competition that I led the students to. I chose one of the students who participated in the competition and has got me habit. They won the global competition to the highly celebrated fit in Nigeria, the government of our state, everybody was all about the news and stuff. The beautiful things that the girl landed a scholarship to she’s done with her university, got a laptop, cash prizes and stuff. And today this young girl is studying computer computer engineering. Yeah, computer engineering, one of the like top universities here. For me, that’s when we still talk and the beautiful thing is that today she volunteers with one of our resource partner resource centers teaching other young girls how to code another young children. They just completed the summer program and she was all there all through the summer. So for me, what’s most important is that this girl through our program, this young girl was able to like achieve her dreams, get a laptop, get into university for free. And another thing is that’s that passion in her, that passion that zero that she’s had, that she’s not only able to like get herself into the STEM career or in the STEM field, but she also helping other young children by getting into that field. That’s the most important thing for me. That’s the most awesome.
[00:28:06:06 - 00:28:06:48] John Onuigbo That’s it.
[00:28:06:48 - 00:28:10:29] Federico Ramallo Right, right. Amazing story. Yeah, thank you for sharing.
[00:28:11:34 - 00:28:26:21] Federico Ramallo Awesome. So thank you very much for joining us, John. I really appreciate it. And I’m, I’m hoping we can stay in touch and I would like to hear, you know, more from you in the future, right? And follow up in your achievements.
[00:28:26:21 - 00:28:31:53] John Onuigbo Thank you so much, Frederick, for also time being on this podcast.
[00:28:31:53 - 00:28:35:19] Federico Ramallo Absolutely, absolutely. Thank you very much.