DON’T SHRINK YOUR INFLUENCE ZONE…

Great FUTOites,
This is my quarterly message to you on behalf of the Lagos Alumni Executives.
Before I go on, I wish you all the best of this month of March 2018.
I want to thank everyone for the support that the present leadership of the Lagos Alumni has received so far. When you elected us, we begged you to trust us. We are seeing that from the meeting of December and the meeting of January through your attendance and donations. We know that some of you are still sitting back to watch if we are really serious about serving you. Yes, we are. Just read on and see if we can convince you to trust us.

PROMOTING THE REASON TO BE PART OF THE ALUMNI
Everyone wants to be part of a group that provides a good reason to spend their time. Our Alumni Association seek to promote a healthy relationship around the topics of networking and family. Most importantly, our numbers can be a valuable benefit for all of us. Marketing experts will confirm that a community with plenty and active population can enjoy benefits in discounts, business to Business growth, business to customer growth, new ideas, safety solutions, etc. What we want to do is to continue to emphasize the reasons for everyone of us to be part of the Alumni. Please joins us to create and to participate in these reasons. Don’t shrink your influence zone!
JOBS AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP
Many of our people are unemployed while many has been laid off from their work places and remain yet productive. This is a challenge we must deal with together. We encourage our people to explore their minds and their environment for solutions they can provide and then create wealth for themselves. We equally urge the businesses and the privileged among us to make themselves and their resources available to support our people who need these assistance. When you have vacancies please share them.
On our part, we will do our best to support you by searching for the funds for you to access to build your ideas. Just get involved because we need the numbers to achieve this.
But I must admonish that you don’t have to peel out of your job to be an entrepreneur. An employee can also think as an entrepreneur and remain productive through their period of work in their workplaces. Entrepreneurship is a behavior and it is that of providing solutions wherever we are and getting paid for it.
ONGOING VOTER REGISTRATION
We have continued to encourage our people to get their voters card. It is our civic duty to vote. Most importantly, we must understand that the more the number of people who collect their voters card, the less the opportunities for free voter space for politicians to rig the election results. We cannot afford to allow these practices by our inaction. Please take the pains and go out to get your card!. The sacrifice is worth it.
PROGRAMS & PROJECTS
As body, our responsibility is to work together to create benefits for all of us. It is the service mandates of the excos to bring up various approaches to achieve these outcomes. We will remind you of some of the schemes we are developing for you,
The Scorecard
In the past we give awards to members. There has been concerns in the selection process. Now, what we want to do is to make this process more empirical. We believe that everyone keeps the alumni going. Those who attend the meetings, those who pay their dues promptly, those who give us donations and those who attend our functions etc are all important. We therefore wish to reward these necessary behaviors that grow our organization. These actions are scored and rated and members are categorized and awarded. There is a committee ready to complete and implement this scheme. The team is led by Chinedu Anyanwu who is the 2^nd National Vice President of the FUTO Alumni Association NEC.
Cooperative
This Scheme is expected unlock many business and social benefits for everyone. In this scheme, members will engage in the most important savings, crowd funding and profit sharing mechanism ever know to man. We have set up a small team, led by Kingsley Ukwuoma, to begin to look into this project. We will inform you of the journey and go-live dates.
Medical emergency Insurance
This can help us save lives in that initial critical moment of emergency where doctors must ask for upfront before beginning to treat. We have begun discussions and we are reviewing proposals from 3 insurance firms already. We are desire to ensure that the contribution we make to this scheme will be affordable and the benefits will be assuring.
Ideas Funding
We hope to find a pool of fund up to 20m? it is going to be tough journey but we must start it. All over the world, we know that those with deep ideas (business owners) and those with deep pockets (investors) are a combination of growth mechanisms for any society. It is expected that those with ideas can challenge for funds from the pool. If well structured, everyone benefits geometrically. So, start to put together your own ideas and your funds.
Discounts
We want to negotiate discounts from service providers? Our number is an asset and we intend to take advantage of it. It is our considered opinion that with our numbers we can negotiate with a minimum of 10 Hotels, 5 Airlines, 5 bus companies, 7 Supermarkets, 25 hospitals etc and gain both discounts and premium treatment for our members. We have opened discussions with some organizations. The committee for this project is yet to be set up. We will appreciate volunteers.
Hubs/clusters
We know that FUTO graduates are meeting in various locations in Lagos. Also, various class/interest groups based in Lagos are meeting. We recognize their need to congregate as FUTOites. But we know that it will be beneficial for everyone to be part of the mainstream official Lagos Chapter while still meeting in their various clusters. Together we can create a governance and operational structure that accommodates everyone in the city and still leave everyone with their control systems. We can find and activate more members and get closer to them and their welfare affairs.
We also appreciate the fact that not everyone can attend all meetings of the chapter but everyone can be fully functional through their dues, sharing of business contacts, networking, finding discounts and deals etc.  Let us come together again! Again, Don’t shrink your influence Zone!
EVENTS IN THE ALUMNI
General Meeting –  by March 25^th, to be hosted on the island.
FUTO Convocation –  formerly slated for march 10^th. The date is now April 7^th. We are telling you this because of the Alumni night on 6^th April where Alumni members from all the chapters will meet to dine, wine and network. Happily, at this Convocation, our former Lagos Chapter Chairman and Former NEC President, Mr Andrew Ejayeriese, will be awarded Honorary Doctorate degree. The Lagos is going with him. He is one of our bests and we must show that to everyone.
IN CONCLUSION
In this period of our journey, we face challenges of our unity. We urge everyone to radically change their approach to the Alumni Association. We need to begin to get more involved and expand our horizon. You need to relook at your influence zones. Don’t shrink it now! There are people who need you and there are people you need. Together we can achieve a lot.
Still in this period, we invite our Christian brethren, to offer some of the prayers and sacrifices of their fasting and abstinence on our behalf, that God will bless the Alumni association so that we will be more focused, united and more productive.

Thank you once again as you renew your commitment to the association.

Collins opara
Chairman,
FUTO Alumni Lagos Chapter.