393 dreamers.
A process held in the open.
The Apostlepreneurship Grant set out to find the young entrepreneurs building businesses worth backing inside the Christ Apostolic Church community. Hundreds of applications were graded with care, debated in the open, and chosen with fairness.
Applications received
393
From Lagos alone
292
Live on YouTube
33
Chapter One
The call goes out
By the time the application window closed, 393 entrepreneurs had submitted pitches — a staggering response. Of those, an extraordinary 292 came from Lagos alone.
Every applicant was emailed the same instruction: be present, live on YouTube, when the grading happens. The Grant Committee wanted the process visible to anyone who cared to watch. Transparency was not a nice-to-have — it was a requirement.
From the Apostlepreneur community.
Live on Kingsrealm Media · grading day.
Chapter Two
The live grading
On the day of the broadcast on Kingsrealm Media, roughly 60 applicants showed up to watch in real time. The committee used an AI-supported grading system — built around an approved seven-point rubric — to score every submission against the same criteria.
When the AI's top 50 from Lagos was revealed, the room was quiet. Only 17of those 50 had actually shown up live. The other 33 spots belonged to people who hadn't followed the only instruction the committee had given.
“Compliance, participation, fairness — these were not tiebreakers. They were the point.”
The Result
Congratulations to Eliz Bags.
The public process led to a public result. The 2026 season has now concluded, and this archive remains as a record of the finalists, the journey, and the community that backed them.
For the record
Want to see how it happened? The full grading session was broadcast live on Kingsrealm Media — watch the recording.
Process documented by Akinwale Olafare, Grant Coordinator.
The 2026 stories are now part of the archive.