History of Flavour for Singles Youth Ministry
Before the beginning
Before Flavour for Singles, our coordinator, Dr. Mrs. Chinyere Oko-Jaja was already a youth minister who talked to the youths at different places. She had written books for the youth such as Single & His Life, Great Mistake and so on.
She was already a youth counsellor who spoke to the youths on a variety of topics, from relationship to purpose, all of these to bring the youths to God.
The Beginning
In 2011, the husband of our coordinator, Rt. Rev. Emmanuel Oko-Jaja brought up the idea of having a youth platform, where she could gather youths to speak to them. This idea seemed good to our coordinator and after praying about it, Flavour for Singles started her monthly meetings on the 28th of January 2012.
The Name
During the course of prayer concerning the start of Flavour for Singles, many names propped up to be used, but none of them seemed suitable until the name “Flavour for Singles” came up. What does this name mean? The name “Flavour for Singles” means that we are a platform that spices up the lives of the youths. It means that we are a platform that adds value to the lives of the youths. This is why every activity we do aims to add value to the lives of the youths, spiritually or otherwise.
Annual Summit
The annual summit is one of the constant activity/event that happens at Flavour for Singles. So how did it come to place? Again before the start of Flavour for Singles, our coordinator had the leading to gather the youths on Valentine’s Day and in December (on a camp basis), before Christmas. This was to redefine the mindset of the youths during these particular seasons. While the Valentine’s Day gathering has only been carried out once, the summit is here to stay.
The first summit began from the 17th to 21st of December 2012 at Bayelsa, which was the flood year in Nigeria. The theme was “BREAKFAST FOR CHAMPIONS”. It was a great time during the summit and it was obvious that the youths were hungry and desperate for these types of gathering.
For more details on our summit click (here)
Other Activities
In 2013, the first workshop was organized where the youths came to learn skills such as decoration, bead making, yoghurt making, baking and card making. These skills impacted a lot of lives and many are still using them to these day.
As the years went by, we have engaged in different activities which are:
- Valentine’s Day Celebration
- Leadership Summit
- Skill Acquisition
- Television program on NDTV which ran for about 2 years (2014 – 2016) every Tuesday
- Outreaches (find details here)
- School Visitation (find details here)
- Smart Youth (find details here)
- Youth Time-Out (find details here)
We have also sponsored people to Government craft centres to learn different skills like tailoring, computer technology & engineering. We’ve also assisted people at the tertiary level of education.