Introduction

I am thrilled to announce that we have secured a standard training and mentorship center for Steemit in the city of Aba, Abia State Nigeria. We lost the use of our former center when the property was sold last year. Ever since then, we had struggled to hire a new place as it was difficult to get a place that is located at or near the city center. But fortunately we where able to get this place and make all necessary payments including the rent, legal fee, agent fee and security fee. The center is located at a popular street in Aba city - 208 Azikiwe Road, Aba Abia State, Nigeria.

Because the facility has not been in use since November 2020, it accumulated a lot of dust and needs major cleaning work. I was able to get two volunteers from SteemAlive community to help us with scrubbing the floor and making it dust free. We are so grateful to @mesonia and @ngobaby for doing the cleaning work for us. The images below show them doing the work

After the cleaning, we had to install some partitions to create a consultation area and the training space proper. So we employed the services of a carpenter who was able to install 2 partitions for us. It was not an easy job as he completed the installation yesterday being Saturday, after working for two days.

What else needs to be done?

The painter will start tomorrow Monday 5/4/2021. The 3D wallpaper installer will also start his work tomorrow too. We will purchase seats, a projector machine, a power generating set and other equipments needed to make the center a suitable place to mentor newbies about Steemit.

Why do we need a training center?

As a community that is is fully geared towards recruitment and mentoring of newbies, a center for doing this training is very important. It serves as a contact point for all new people and also for our marketing efforts. We can easily direct people to the center for mentorship. Additionally, we are looking to bring in investors. These potential investors are usually not willing to do business with any organization that has no physical presence in the city. A center like this, which doubles as an office too, will go a long way in raising the image of Steemit in Aba city as a global brand.

What else are my targets for 2021 besides the center?

• A solid Community trailAs a country rep, i have set my sights on achieving great goals. My biggest goal to be achieved by December 2021, is to build a large, self-sustaining community which can stand on its own. SteemAlive currently have the second most popular curation trail with 250 folowers and we are trying to raise the number of followers and the amount of SP invested in each account. My target is for the community to vote with at least $20 by year end - currently our trail is voting at $5.
  I also want to have at least 1000 active users and investors from Nigeria by or before the end of 2021

• More active users: There are many inactive users from Nigeria and this is partly because of inability to receive reasonable earnings from their posts. Many simply grow weak when they see no reasonable votes on their posts for a long time. We want to be able to sustain many, especially newbies. So in addition to the support from booming, a reasonable curation trail can be useful in being able to support as many people as there are in the community.

• Create a local Usecase for Steem: I want to reach out to businesses and see how we can encourage them to accept steem payments. This would be a huge project which we plan to start from the large community we are building. Many of our members are already local business owners. Others have skills that could be exchanged for steem. So in the nearest future, I and a few members will look at the possiblity of setting up a platform that will enable use of steem as a means of exchange for services rendered or goods bought. We look for ward to that in the nearest future.

Images from the center

The facility being washed and mopped by @mesonia and @ngobaby

The facility being washed and mopped by @mesonia and @ngobaby

@val123 came to visit on Saturday and had this selfie with @focusnow

More weekend Visitors - @whitestallion, @kadosh2340 - selfie with @focusnow

Thursday visitor @sammylinks took a selfie with @focusnow

Conclusion

My being active on the platform has been affected by the projects on hand, but Once the center becomes operation likely by this weekend, I will resume full activity as usual.

I want to thank @steemcurator01 and @stephenkendal for supporting steemalive and projects we run within the community. We hope to get bigger, better and take Steem to the moon.

Written by @focusnow.