Build a Peer Mentorship Network for Out-of-School Youth in Lagos

In Lagos alone, an estimated 1.2 million young people between 15 and 24 are neither in school nor in formal employment. Most government and NGO interventions focus on children still in school, leaving this older cohort with few touchpoints. The gap is not just skills: it is social capital, direction, and the belief that there is a route forward. Peer mentorship has shown strong results in contexts like South Africa's Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator and Kenya's Simu ya Jamii programme. But these models were built for different infrastructure and different labour markets. Lagos has its own topology: dense informal economies, high mobile penetration, neighbourhood loyalty structures, and a culture of 'big brother/big sister' relationships that already exist informally. Your task is to design a peer mentorship network model specifically for out-of-school youth aged 16 to 24 in a defined Lagos neighbourhood (choose one: Ajegunle, Bariga, or Mushin). The deliverable is a programme design document that covers: how mentors are recruited and matched with mentees, what the first 90 days of the relationship looks like, how sessions happen (in person, by phone, or via WhatsApp), and how progress is tracked without requiring literacy or internet access from participants. Good work will ground every design choice in a real constraint. If you say sessions happen weekly, explain how you account for shift work and irregular income. If you propose WhatsApp check-ins, explain what happens when someone loses data. The strongest submissions will also include a one-page version of the model that a community youth leader could read and implement without external funding in the first phase.