Sit tight. This is a 10-year summary of TMO, and we will tell our story ourselves.
2016
On the 10th of June 2016, I made our first post on this blog – a welcome note. It was published in the evening while I was in my apartment in Bakau, Gambia. I would then go ahead to make a post on Facebook and my BBM status at the time, at about 11:30 pm, with shaky hands and trembling feet. That was the first time I would be letting the world, including my family and friends, know about this random idea I had been working on in the last few weeks.
Two months before that, on a random Saturday morning which happened to be the 2nd of April 2016, I was returning from morning prayers in church when “Teens Meet” randomly dropped in my heart. It was so specific and seemed random because I wasn’t even thinking about anything related; it was the Holy Spirit. The distance between the church and my home then was a 10-minute walk, and in those few minutes, everything “Teens Meet” would encompass and achieve in the coming years was perfectly laid out. It was too perfectly planned to be ordinary; too detailed to be dismissed.
I got home that day and brought out a jotter to note everything, as much as I could. I remember I had just five coins on my desk and wasn’t even sure where my next meal would come from. But there was a plan right in front of me that I mustn’t let go of.
It all started with a great burden on my heart: the need to do something for teenagers like myself. It was my last year as a teenager, and I knew what it would have meant if I had someone to hold my hand through some of the most difficult times, and if I could express some of my talents or willingness to volunteer easily, without thinking much about it. I thought of many things I could do, but nothing ever made sense, nor did I even know when to start, so I dismissed it. It wasn’t until that Saturday morning in April that everything came together like a master planner decided to put me through, and He sure did!
I would spend the next few weeks mapping out what our site would look like. I was a blogger at the time and had also started making a little money from content writing, so for some reason, I figured my first step would be to lock in a domain name. On the 27th of April 2016, I bought the teensmeetonline.com domain. All thanks to my mummy, who gave me her debit card details because I told her I needed to buy something important online and didn’t have any money. I didn’t mention what it was, but she gave me her card details regardless. It was about $10, equivalent to about ₦3,000 at the time. Thank you, mummy!
From that moment until the 10th of June, I started designing our website with WordPress templates, hoping it would make sense in the end. I recall our very first site design had my picture on the side widget with a little note, with mostly a plain white background and some parts in green font (I eventually removed the picture less than a month in because I didn’t want it to be about me. Haha). The idea was to keep it simple while encouraging teenagers to share their stories. I kept tweaking the design as much as possible, and I think the current one has stayed that way for about 8 years now, except for some minor changes here and there. Most of what you see on the menu today was there from day one.
Up next, I needed a logo. I remember reaching out to one of my sisters from a WhatsApp community – Voice of Worth (VOW) who was a graphic designer at the time. I told her what I wanted without giving many details, and she came up with three variants of the “TMO” logo. I remember cropping one out from the image and using it as our logo. To date, I don’t have the HD version of that logo because I never asked and just used the cropped screenshot. I guess I was just naive and didn’t think the HD logo would be so important eventually. I don’t think any of our graphic designers at TMO have forgiven me for this atrocity! Haa! Anyway, thank you to Oluwafeyisayo Leke!
The first blog post was submitted by my friend, Adedolapo Olayinka. I remember she was learning how to become a fashion designer at the time, so I encouraged her to share her knowledge with the world, and she did. In fact, she made it a little series. Her debut post was “There’s More to Fashion”, published on June 17, 2016. She published two more the following month and wrapped up the series. Today, Adedolapo is a Medical Doctor and Master of Ceremonies, but I’m really thankful she did that. Thank you, Dr Dolapo!
We’ve had dedicated authors for the blog since then, and also once-in-a-while guest authors. Our most-read blog post today is “Teenage Bible Characters | God Can Use You Too” by Ayooluwa Ariyo with over 73,000 views! Fun fact: in the year it was published, it had fewer than 20 views. I guess this is your sign to STAY.
Shortly after, I would get DMs and emails from cool teenagers fascinated by what I was doing and who wanted to join. This was how our first management team was formed, and they are now our Trustees: Victoria Adepoju Babarinde, Deborah Agboye, Olayemi Mary Adeniji, Doyinsola Moyinoluwa, Eyitayo Owoeye, Boluwatife Akindele, and Oluwatobiloba Babalola.
In October of the same year, we would launch the first edition of TMO Conversations “Harnessing your Potentials for Excellence”. Our guest speaker at the time was Babs Michael, my tutor from way back, who agreed to teach over 250 teenagers gathered on a WhatsApp group to learn. We then published the compiled note on our blog. Thank you, Mr Babs! TMO Conversations would happen again the following year and the year after that, making it part of our core projects and reaching 1125 teenagers in total.
That same year in December, we had a “Teen Silence” online campaign to say no to silencing teenagers. It was to encourage more teenagers to speak up about their challenges and not die in silence. We did this with social media posters and also numerous blog posts. At the same time, we had several entries on the “Tell Your Own Story” section of our blog, where teenagers shared bitter and sweet stories anonymously and onymously. We also had a “Teen Depression awareness” campaign, which spanned over a few years as a sequel to the Teen Silence campaign.
2016 started slow but steady, and it’s because there were people who believed in me from day one and trusted this vision. Many of them have stayed with us since then.
2017
2017 was the year of many firsts and the first full year in TMO. We had our first school outreach on the 26th of January 2017 at Ambassadors Academy, Oyo. Olooro, Oke Oroki, Oyo State, Nigeria, and we reached 75 students in total. Since then, we’ve been to 24 schools and have reached 3014 students!
For our first anniversary, we launched our community outreach – Leaving Prints On Hearts (LPOH). It was the first of its kind and the one project that has stayed consistent ever since, with the tenth edition happening this year. LPOH 1.0 was in four locations – Lagos, Ile-Ife, Ogbomoso, Nigeria, and Yuna Village, The Gambia. We left prints on the hearts of 550 people in total.
LPOH would then have 8 more editions in the coming years, with the most recent being 2025 as we await this year’s edition. In total, LPOH has been to over 15 cities in two countries and reached 3668 hearts; you can find the breakdown for each year on our blog.
In September 2017, we had a worship event tagged Teens Meet to Worship (TMW) and have had two sessions so far, with the second and last held in 2019. In both editions, we had a total of 365 teenagers in attendance, but we have now halted this project due to the lack of infrastructure.
2017 was the first time we saw our team come alive, and the TMO Army was officially born! We printed our first sets of shirts, and I gathered my friends and some of our supporters in The Gambia for a photoshoot. Shoutout to Tobi Babs, who designed our shirt.
Our small team gathered for the first time in Lagos, Nigeria, in December; away from the online chats, I could see my team in person. It was so lovely! We even made a year-in-review post that year, and it was the first of many, because we’ve done that every year since then.
2018
With a renewed hope to forge ahead again, we started mapping plans for the new year. We seemed to have a template to work with, considering what we did in 2017, while opening up to new ideas.
So, in March 2018, we kicked off the Pad-a-teen project to commemorate International Women’s Day. The idea was that we would visit schools, homes, and streets to talk to girls about menstrual hygiene, while debunking myths around it and creating a safe space for them to talk to us. In the end, we would share free pads. How has that been? Well, we’ve had six editions so far in over 10 cities in two countries and have reached 1805 girls in total.
This was also the year we launched our first magazine edition, featuring Moyosade Ademiluyi (Sisi Adire). We would go ahead to launch a second edition two years later, featuring Itty Okim. But that was it. We haven’t had another edition since then, but still hope to.
2019 – 2020
We maintained the status quo in these years while focusing on building more solid structures. You can see the recap on our blog – 2019 Review and 2020 Review.
2021
This was the year we launched our TMO Academy, in addition to all our other projects. Through this, we teach teenagers to be skilled in certain areas. We’ve had courses on Content Writing, Creating and Growing a Business, and Entrepreneurship, training over 200 teenagers so far.
This same year, we did an in-house mentorship training. Since we kept getting requests from teenagers to be coached/mentored, we wanted to have some of us who were at least 20 years old formally trained. We had professionals from Mentally Aware Nigeria Initiative and Mirabel Center, including Aremotobi (Life and Relationship Coach), hold online sessions and webinars with us, and 10 participants were awarded certificates.
2022 – 2026
In the past four years, we’ve simply replicated everything we laid in our foundation. Our team grew in numbers and also in age. Our teenagers started becoming adults who graduated, moved places, got married, and now have babies. A lot can indeed happen in 10 years!
Every time we get new teenagers onboarded to the team, I let them know that it’s possible to do great things from a small place, and many of the TMO leaders today started as teenagers, including myself.
It’s been such a wild ride. On many days, we won. On other days, it felt like we were crashing. But through it all, we’ve been here, doing the same things still.
See our Years in Review to catch up on what we were up to for each year.
What do I have to say?
The momentum with which we started and have continued so far can be traced back to that 10-minute walk that Saturday morning. No one else could have mapped this out perfectly if it weren’t for God. I’m so thankful for how well He has guided us all along. Every time my strength fails and I want to throw in the towel, I look at the exceptional team he gave me. None of them were/are an accident.
That said, I’m so thankful for TMO Army – past and current – for being so passionate about TMO. Many have come and gone, and many are still here. I’m thankful to each one of you for the role you played and still play in TMO. We won’t be here today if you didn’t choose to volunteer with us.
I’m also thankful to everyone who donated and still donates. On days when I didn’t have to go bankrupt to make an outreach happen, I marvel at the goodwill of kind people around us. My team, family, friends, mentors, and well-wishers who don’t even know me personally. Everyone has been so generous, and I do not take it for granted.
We’ve reached over 10,000 teenagers in 10 years! These numbers may seem small to you or even huge, but to us at TMO, we see the humans in these numbers. If only one life is changed, that’s good news!
So, once again, thank you so much for 10 years!
What is TMO up to?
Well, it’s just half the year, and we are yet to have our Leaving Prints On Hearts (LPOH) project, among others. The team is working hard in every location to make this happen, and as always, we need your support. Please, do donate!
While we are not fully sure of what tomorrow holds, we are fully confident in the one who holds tomorrow, and rest assured in an exceptional team that just makes things work. So, we will thrive and push again and again until we reach even more teenagers. Please join us!
That said, Happy 10th Anniversary to TMO!
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Teens Meet Outreach 