Empowering Women of the Future - Day 1, Ajegunle.

Today at EWOF, we formally introduced the project, its aims and objectives and announced a timeline for the 12 weeks long programme with the community to the 20 participants.

We started the programme by distributing MTN branded notepads and pens to all participants to enable them take notes from this meeting and subsequent ones.

We also agreed on the Sheros Creed.

Some of the agreements we reached were:

·         No late coming;

·         Respect for self and others;

·         No putting down of self or/and others;

·         Volunteering of self;

·         Sharing information we are comfortable sharing with each other freely and truthfully.

We then spoke one after the other about community; things that we like about our communities; things we like about ourselves; a woman we admire and one thing we hope to change in our community.

Some of the participants said they would love to put an end to violence against women, teen pregnancy and illiteracy of the girl child, joblessness and indecent dressing of some of the youths, build good roads, schools and a functional healthcare centre in their community if they had the power.

Participants were then given these essay topics to write on and submit at the next group meeting:

              I.      Violence Against Women

            II.      Teenage Pregnancy

          III.      Education of the Girl Child.

The 1 hour 30 minutes session closed with Affirmation of self.

Speaking with some of the young women afterwards, they were very excited about their MTN branded Note Pads and Pens which were generously donated by Mr Sam Arewa Jnr, the Regional Sales Manager for MTN Nigeria and they were anxiously anticipating the end of the 12 weeks programme ceremony where awards will be given out to outstanding young women. They also expressed their gratitude for the clothes and shoes we donated to them.

Facilitators for this session were Vera Edore, Blessing Ashi and I.