Teach For Nigeria partners with Teach For All’s Coaching & Consulting team to plan for the organization’s next decade

Launched in 2017, Teach For Nigeria celebrated its fifth anniversary in 2022, having recruited over 1000 teachers in its first half-decade, including 524 current fellows and 637alumni. While the organization had grown in size and learning over its first five years, the Teach For Nigeria team felt as if it had been operating in “pilot mode” since its establishment. In late 2021, as they looked ahead to the next five years and beyond, the team decided it was time for them to examine their scale and impact and make informed decisions driven by data and evidence. 

Teach For Nigeria leveraged the Teach For All global organization’s Coaching & Consulting (C&C) team to support them in designing and implementing a project to create a 10-year vision and a list of 5-year priorities, which they planned to present to their board of directors for approval at the end of November 2021.

Over two months, Teach For Nigeria’s senior leadership engaged deeply in this work, and consulted with members of the C&C team to strategically consider what they wanted to be true for their organization and the communities where they work in the next 10 years. Given the complexity and diversity of their context and the multiple stakeholders they wanted to include in the process, the project required both the leadership and on-the-ground experience of the Teach For Nigeria team and the insights shared by the C&C team and to be successful - an embodiment of Teach For All’s “locally rooted & globally informed” core value.

To support the development of the strategic plan, the Coaching & Consulting team shared insights gathered from other Teach For All network partners about what worked for them in their strategic planning journeys. The C&C team also supported Teach For Nigeria to  focus on data analysis, including an in-depth analysis of the organization’s data on scale, organizational strength, and program to identify strengths and opportunities. 

The two teams also collaborated to incorporate stakeholder engagement. For example, together, Teach For Nigeria and the C&C team brought diverse perspectives into the strategy planning  process through a listening tour during which they interviewed fellows, alumni, staff and board members, families, students, school leaders, and government stakeholders. The two teams also worked together to design a discussion about potential priorities for a planned leadership team retreat. The insights and reflections from the retreat were then used to debrief and plan for the full staff retreat and board engagement.

"We worked in a dynamic way," explained Edikan, a member of Teach For Nigeria's senion leadership team. "It was instrumental to [ensuring] it was really localized, while also bringing ideas on gathering data, working with different stakeholders, adapting to different audiences, and more."

Later, the C&C team provided leadership coaching to the members of the Teach For Nigeria team responsible for producing the first draft of the vision, strategy, and priorities. The Coaching & Consulting team also supported Teach For Nigeria on related projects designed to further solidify the organization for the next 10 years, including:

• evolving their organizational structure
• revising their growth model and assessing the enablers for scale in the Nigerian context
• furthering the development of management and leadership
• measuring their impact through an external research study 

Together, Teach For Nigeria and the Coaching & Consulting Team designed a retreat for the board of directors where the new strategic plan and priorities were presented—and ultimately approved. This collaboration enabled Teach For Nigeria to enter the new year with a plan in place to steer the growth of the organization for the next decade. Teach For Nigeria has since shared their vision and approach with other network partners who are considering expansion, which has fueled even greater global impact.

Teach For Nigeria’s 10-Year Vision Statement

By 2031, Teach For Nigeria will have a network of over 20,000 leaders across all geopolitical zones in Nigeria working in deep partnership with local communities to impact over a million students each year. Collectively, we will ensure our students, regardless of socioeconomic background, attain excellence, fulfill their potential, and become leaders of themselves and their communities