Potential Means Nothing Without Action | Adijat Okuyelu | TEDxNUTM

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boats changed completely the way I think about poverty. A boat can be perfectly built, strong, and capable. It's designed to move people much beyond where they could ever go by themselves. But you leave that boat at the shore, it stays stagnant and it does not move. I want you to think of that picture.

A boat, strong and capable. My name as they say is adju. I'm a finance executive. I have no business at all with boats and fisher women. I'm used to boardrooms, finance, and spreadsheet. I'm an entrepreneur. I'm a social entrepreneur. And on this fateful day, I was making inquiries about seafood export. And a conversation changed my

trajectory. As they say, this is what you got versus what you bought versus what what's the saying >> exactly? But this is a good story. [snorts] I think in the context is used often. It's a disappointing reality, but mine was a hidden blessing. I listened to the women at the pearl of this work. I was seeking

extremely hardworking generations of talent, mother, daughter, grandmother every single day on this waters lagoons either fishing themselves or selling the proceeds. But they lived in abject poverty. They could even hardly use what they were trading to fend for themselves. It didn't make any sense. I mean, this was me looking for export. I

was looking for volume. And what I saw, I couldn't unsee. Thousands of women, but together, they actually couldn't fulfill any of my desires. The potential was there. So if the potential is there, what exactly is stopping things moving? I kept asking myself and the poor lady, poor poor lady that was telling me, I was just asking her so