Be a Change Agent From 2022

By Stella Okoronkwo on January 14, 2022

Category: Change

Who Is a Change Agent?

According to TechTarget.com, a change agent, is someone who promotes and enables change to happen within any group, community or organization. In business, a change agent is an individual who promotes and supports a new way of doing something within the company, whether it's the use of a new process, the adoption of a new management structure or the transformation of an old business model to a new one. Being a change agent means volunteering to be a voice for the voiceless people in our community. It means being an advocate for them and leaving no stones unturned until visible changes are made.

We certainly need lots of change agents in our today’s world due to too many social ills staring us in the face especially in many African countries.

Lack of Education

Due to poverty and lack of understanding, a lot of our people were denied the right to go to school. Some people attributed education as belonging to the white man and as a result, they did not want to associate with it. Even today, some people feel that way still. Others are religious adepts who, on their part, associate education to Christianity which they call the white man’s religion. So they are busy burning schools and churches that missionary organizations and communities spent fortunes to build thereby taking already developing communities backwards.

Lack of Jobs

Our private and public universities are churning out university graduates every year but there are not enough jobs to go round for these graduates. Therefore, many of these graduates have found themselves as perpetual job seekers while those who want quick money have become armed robbers, prostitutes, drug barons or human traffickers. People are quick to blame the government for all the social ills we have today. They also expect the government to find solution to everything. I don’t think the government is to blame for all the ills in our society.

Human Trafficking

Another social ill that is very disturbing today is that of human trafficking. The traffickers promise foreign jobs to young people and make them pay huge sums of money to get passport and flight ticket to travel abroad. On getting to a country, they are tricked into prostitution or drug selling. Many young people have perished in the desert or in the Mediterranean sea. Some of these are undergraduates or business people but they abandon these things just to travel to greener pastures. Some are forced to work as house servants in the Middle east where they are dehumanized and sometimes murdered. Many others are taken to another front where their organs are harvested one by one until they die slowly. Meanwhile, parents back home believe that their sons or daughters are doing very good jobs overseas and will soon return with lots of money and cars. Let us arise and be change agents in our community.

I have only cited three social ills but there are many more. Allow me to suggest that you and I can help to fight these social ills otherwise they will stay with us forever. They will destroy the young people in our generation. Let us become a voice for the voiceless and change agents for our communities. You and I should put ours hands on the deck and begin to sensitize our fellow citizens about the right things to do to solve the problems we created. Let’s get them to a paradigm shift or change of mentality. Let us educate them on potentials available to them in Africa at very low cost. Let us teach them how to create jobs out of inexpensive raw materials.