YouthPhoria UK© The Premier Role Model Edition November 2013 | Page 37

James

Sesay
A model business

Young entrepreneur James
Sesay started his own business,
Social Add, along with his friend
Josh Oluwafemi. He is also a
founding member of the
mentoring group
Project BISCEY.
YouthPhoriaUK© had a chat with
James about the motivation
behind his entrepreneurial
and community spirit.

“With the growth of social media, and
particularly social networking, it dawned
on us (me and Josh) that we could use the
power of online communication to connect
people with the products they are passionate about - in a more efficient way than
existing methods. From this we came up
with the idea for Social Add.  

range of events and activities that centre
around helping young people aged 11 to
16 in our local area of Southwark. I have
always wanted to give back to my community and thought it would be good to bring
together a number of role models in the
area to help do so.
I think it’s very important to have role
models, as they can almost act as hope
for individuals who are less fortunate than
others. I myself grew up in Peckham and
went through the phase of looking up to the
older males around me. Those in particular
who showed the most love to me were the
ones I listened to and acted on their word.

this was an important time where the
subjects I chose mattered, I felt the whole
year group were under-prepared for this.
I was fortunate enough to do well in
subjects that I liked in school, so ended up
choosing these in college and this laid out
the path I walk today although if I could do
my college years all over again I would have
taken it a bit more seriously. I did attend all
the classes and pass with good grades but
I don’t think I utilised my time outside the
classroom well and if I did I may be a bit
further than I am today but there’s still a lot
of time ahead of me!

Fortunately for me, although my area
wasn’t the best of places, I managed
to surround myself with older people who
were doing things; this gradually became
all that I saw so it became all that I knew. 
For example my football managers, although
they too were quite young they managed to
do some really good stuff for the area, such
as setting up the football team and getting
the youth involved. They also made sure that
we were all on track in school and acted as
mentors even until today. 

Our services provide businesses with an
opportunity to create a presence on social
network platforms, create a buzz for a new
products & services and access potential
customers. We do this through our primary
service Social Net. We create status
updates which advertise the business or
product and feed this through Facebook or
Twitter via our carefully selected individuals
who have a large following. This stimulates
conversation among followers generating
huge exposure to potential customers.
In addition to Social Add I am also a
founding member of a mentoring group
in Southwark called Project BISCEY –
see www.projectbiscey.co.uk.

Looking back at my school years I was
pretty uncertain as to what I wanted to be
when I grew older. I always enjoyed Maths
and was advised to be an accountant by my
dad, but after researching this line of work,
I opted against it due to the plain focus
on numbers.

Project BISCEY is an organisation run by
a group of 18 to 20 year olds and we run a

It was a bit of a confusing time during the
transition from school to college. Given that

I’d like to see more recognition of those
who are doing the right thing. They should
be highlighted as examples to show people
that crime isn’t the only way, that there
are other options available.

If I had an hour to do absolutely anything I would sit down and talk to
JayZ and Obama about life. I think they are two brilliant men and to
be able to share a conversation with them would be amazing.
YouthPhoriaUK

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