Steemit Ultimate Challenge 8 Weeks - Week #4

vic-essien (47)in #steemitultimatechallenge • 6 years ago (edited)

NOTE: This post is an entry for my participation in "Steemit Ultimate Challenge 8 Weeks contest" organized by @dobartim. I encourage you to join the contest. More information here.

First i appreciate @dobartim for this opportunity given for me to express how steemit changed my life.

Prior to knowing about Steemit and joining the platform life was very rosy for me without any difficulty. I was a student then and I could boast of financial independence because my small scale business was doing well. This rosy life ended November 2016 due to an uncalculated and careless risk I took by investing larger part of my finance into several ponzi scheme that came up then in Nigeria like MMM, Ultimate Cycler, P2P and the rest. I took this risk because I wanted to acquire more money to be able to take care of major responsibility in my family consisting of my mother and four (4) siblings without my father.

Image of me and one of my siblings

Unfortunately, before I could claim my investment and profit from the ponzi scheme I invested with, those ponzi scheme crashed as at December 2016. I ran into bankruptcy and my small scale business wasn’t sufficient enough to sustain me due to low capital.

I began to face the difficult side of life. During that period I was in the final year of undergraduate degree programmme at the University of Uyo and I was to pay my School Fees as we returned for the second semester in January 2017. I had no Money to pay my school fees, my mother wasn’t able to help me because the little resource she had, she used it to address the pressing education need of my siblings. I had to loan money to enable me pay my fees before the deadline. When it was the period to pay back the loan, I had no Money to pay back, so I had to Loan money from another individual to pay back the due loan.

Image showing prove of my studentship identity

I lived a life of loaning money to back existing loan. I lost financial independency and if I was to be told that life would turn out that way, I would not have believed.

In May 2017, @samstickkz (of which I didn’t know from before) contacted me through WhatsApp and told me about Steemit. I logged into the Steemit site but I couldn’t get any factual understanding about the platform. I developed the perception that Steemit was ponzi scheme and I refused joining the platform. I was even surprised how @samstickkz got my contact because we haven’t meet before.

In November 2017, @samstickkz reached out to me again and gave me more insight about the platform, he told me I don’t have to invest any money to get started and he expressed how I could earn from blogging. So i gave it a try and registered on Steemit. After registering and got my account approved, @samstickkz added me to the @steemit-uyo community he started of which currently I am an admin in the community putting effort to help the community grow on daily basics.

Since then till now, my life has regained its financial independence.

My financial independence Steemit restored to me has enabled me to do the following;

To successfully complete my undergraduate research project (a requirement for successfully completing my undergraduate programme at the University of Uyo) which I defended December 2017.

Image Prove of my undergraduate research project

To be able to pay all debt and loans I owed.

To be able to take major responsibility of addressing the needs of my siblings, like assisting my mother to support their education financially.

To support projects of the Steemit community I belong (@steemit-uyo). For example here I donated funds to the community together with other steemians of the community which was used to mobilize food and household items which we used to reach out to the orphanage on valentine day, 14 February 2018.

Enabled me to empower and help other. For example here I was able to help a poor student pay her school fees, I was able to partner with organization on University of Uyo Campus to host an entrepreneurship summit in December 2017 where 100 students in attendance where oriented on why they need to embrace entrepreneurship and sharing with them on business idea they could invest in and gain profit, etc.

Photograph from the Entrepreneurial Summit Hosted

I was able to boost my small scale business of graphics art beck to life.

One major interesting features I have benefited from, Steemit business-wise is that I have been able to network with various steemians like @prechi , @princeso and Steemit communities like @kingbee @steemit-uyo and I got some as business client where I offer them my service on graphics art and get paid by them.

Notwithstanding, I was able to use some earnings from Steemit to invest in Jamis fashion company as an investor. Jamis fashion is concerned with the production of African traditional attire. The investment is aimed at generating monthly income for me.

Through networking with other steemians, I heard about Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI) emerging leaders program and how to apply in December 2017. I applied for the program and I was among the 145 persons selected out of over 4000 applicant. I am currently undergoing the program.

There is a common saying that

The moment you stop learning, you start dying.

Since I joined Steemit, education has been a continuous process to me. I have learnt a lot through the post of other steemians on health, life, leadership, business, crypto currency. Before Joining Steemit, I have had knowledge about crypto currency but I didn’t understand how it operates. Since joining Steemit, I have understood the crypto operation and I have know about a lot of coins, some of which I bought and currently holding.

Finally, because of the value I have gotten from Steemit, I got engaged with promoting Steemit to people in my sphere of reach through every social media platform I belonged to, through street viral campaign, through workshops / conferences I attend. The essence is to help these set of individuals gain the value I have gained from steemit. You can find evidence here. So far I have brought in lot of new steemians like @sikan-eyen , @samueloption @wizcard , @peterjuan , @ndueheekpe , @dorkay , @estherikott , @jstringz , @henrymax etc. More evidence can be found here and here .