What happens when you start volunteering and discover that you can do much more than just help out?
For Damilola Akanni, volunteering became a journey into advocacy, leadership and creating opportunities for other young people.
Today, Damilola is a youth leader, gender equality advocate and social impact professional working across education, youth development, civic engagement, women’s empowerment and advocacy. But behind all the titles is someone who has consistently chosen to show up, get involved and use her voice for things she believes matter.
And she has been doing that on a pretty big scale.
Through the different programmes and initiatives she has supported, Damilola has contributed to work reaching over 5,000 girls and young people across Nigeria, including communities in Lagos, Ogun, Kwara and the FCT.
A big part of her work focuses on helping young people understand their rights, find their voices and become more confident participants in their communities.
She has worked on programmes tackling Sexual and Gender-Based Violence (SGBV), mentoring students in schools and supporting initiatives that help young people understand how to recognize, prevent and respond to violence.
But Damilola’s work doesn’t stop at the community level.
At YouthHubAfrica, where she served as a Programs Associate, she worked on initiatives that connected young people to spaces where decisions about their future were being discussed. She supported stakeholder engagements, project implementation and youth advocacy efforts, including the Youth Shadow Report on Nigeria’s Voluntary National Review of the Sustainable Development Goals.
She also helped create opportunities for Nigerian youth to participate in international conversations, including the United Nations High-Level Political Forum.
In other words, she isn’t just encouraging young people to speak up.
She’s helping them get into the rooms where their voices can actually be heard.
And her passion for service isn’t something she picked up recently.
While studying Agricultural Economics and Extension at the University of Ilorin, Damilola was already actively involved in volunteering. In her final year, her commitment was recognized when she was named the Most Outstanding Volunteer of the Year by the Students’ Union in 2023.
Looking at her journey today, that recognition feels like a fitting reflection of what she has continued to do.
For Damilola, service is about more than adding another activity to your CV. It’s about using what you have, your skills, your voice, your time and your ideas, to make something better for someone else.
And perhaps that’s the most interesting part of her story.
She isn’t simply building a career in the development sector.
She’s building a life around service.
One programme. One young person. One conversation. One opportunity at a time.
This week, we celebrate Damilola Akanni as our Voluserve Volunteer Spotlight.
