The year began with the anticipation of the 2023 Gubernatorial elections in Nigeria. This was also precedented by Voters' apathy and distrust by 70% of the citizens on exercising their legal franchise through voting. The Reinforce, Educate, and Empower project (REEP) is a civic engagement project, inspired by contemporary poor outcomes in voter registration and active participation in the electioneering process in Cross River State and Nigeria at large. Precisely, with the need to ensure mass, informed and safe participation in the recently concluded Nigeria 2023 gubernatorial election and beyond the REEP project was birthed.

This project was targeted towards individuals, stakeholders, traders in markets, and people in various faith-based organizations including key community leaders across all age groups alike, as well as the online community in the light of the project's objectives. Particular people within the generally accepted voting age of 18 and above.

Global Shapers Calabar Hub as a community saw it necessary to kick-start a continuing voter education and sensitization project that is set out to encourage individuals and groups across the accepted ages and communities to exercise their franchise. This project aimed to foster strong interest among these individuals and groups thereby encouraging maximal civic participation with respect to matters like national leadership and exercising their franchise even beyond the 2023 national election.

The hub activities for this project are: 50 Days Online Voters Education Awareness Campaign: This began on August 12, 2023, and ended on December 6, 2022. The Hub engaged in curating content to meet the objectives of the project. And then these contents were used to create the visuals for the online publicity accordingly. • On-site sensitization: This was held on the 13th of January 2023 at the Calabar Central Mosque. Two representatives from the hub were appointed to address the men and women. What are the project's short and long-term goals? Short-term goal: Increase the percentage of voter registration and participation in the 2023 general elections, particularly in Calabar and Cross River state at large. Long-term goal: consistently encourage maximal civic participation for national leadership concerns and exercise of the franchise even beyond the 2023 national election.

The hub carried out a voter awareness and sensitization programme via online and on-site mediums. With this, we were able to sensitise the populace about the importance of voting and doing so accordingly in keeping with the federal electoral laws. For the online phase of the programme, we used the following platforms: Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. During the on-site sensitization campaign, we visited a Mosque in the city of Calabar, where we had the opportunity to engage with about 190 people: 150 Men and 30 Women in total. We also had a media awareness on the theme of the project, on a popular radio programme in Calabar city hosted by a Calabar Shaper tagged ‘Orange Shows with Abenmire on Hit 95.5 FM, Calabar’’ From the on-site programme, we had people making a verbal commitment, given the high level of voter apathy that was noticed. They all promised to go all out and actively participate positively in the voting process. On the Radio session, we also had people who called in expressing commitment to go out and vote rightly. On the radio, we had about 15,000 active listeners. Who are the project collaborators, if any? The Coalition of Youth-Led NGOs, Cross River State, Nigeria.