Ifeanyi Aneke is the current Boy With a Ball assistant country director in Nigeria. Growing up, he always knew he wanted to help people— to save their lives. Originally, he thought this passion would come through the medical field, aspiring to become a doctor. However, it was when he was introduced to Boy With a Ball that he realized where his true calling lay.
Ifeanyi knew Emeka, the current country director in Nigeria, since he was four years old. They went to the same church and grew up in the same community. Emeka approached Ifeanyi about the idea of starting a super-heroic team who would change the lives of young people and their communities in Nigeria, and Ifeanyi knew he found what he was made for. What really grabbed Ifeanyi’s attention was that Boy With a Ball focused on developing young people, “I saw myself called to help young people, especially to find out and discover their purpose in life and then to reach their dreams.” From there, Ifeanyi volunteered with Love Your City until 2016, when he was invited to become full-time staff and help build out the Nigeria Boy With a Ball team.
Ifeanyi himself struggled with discovering his purpose, he knew he had a passion to save lives and the only way he could think to do so was to study medicine and become a doctor, but he realized that wasn’t so. He recalled, “Somehow God orchestrated and put people in my life that really helped me to get to [Boy With a Ball]... He helped me to discover that I am not actually called to work in the hospital, but that I’m called to work out there— in the places where people are. Where people are not really rich, and people can be sick in their body, but then they are [also] spiritually, emotionally, psychologically sick…these are the ones He has called me to heal.” It is through his experience discovering his purpose that he chose to care for those who are unsure about their own.
A lot of young people in his community are unsure of their identity, which is only exacerbated by their struggle with poverty, drugs, and other vices; “You can see poverty really weakening and then limiting the potentials and the things that they could do.” Through growing friendships with many in the community, Ifeanyi noticed young people can receive the encouragement and guidance they need to gain hope for their futures and start reaching their potential. These relationships have been Ifeanyi’s favorite part of Love Your City and becoming involved with Boy With a Ball, saying, “People are able to connect with each other …our ability to see everybody as the same and then build friendships that are very intentional eventually leads to transformation in people’s life.”
Ifeanyi noticed a transformation in his community as well as within himself. Within the community, he notes many members who gain hope for their lives and moved out of poverty. They have gone further in their lives through that hope. Within himself he has “really learned how to be bold and also to be able to share [his] stories without feeling intimidated…knowing that actually my voice holds something and someone needs to hear me because somehow, that will help the person to find their own voices.”
What Ifeanyi has learned through his journey of discovering his purpose as well as helping others discover their own is that “God is right there by your side, and He’s willing to help you… just listen to the instructions that He’s giving you, you will figure it out, and it will blow your mind to see how far you can get.”
To learn more about Ifeanyi, Boy With a Ball in Nigeria, and discovering your purpose check out the full interview.
