Nigerian Lawyer, Barrister Peace Oyanbo Owei has launched a non-governmental organisation (NGO) known as the ‘She 4 She’ initiative designed for the girl child and women empowerment.
Owei said the Initiative would empower women through capacity building to help create an enabling environment where they can have access to health care, build their self-confidence and be able to compete anywhere in the world for various opportunities.
She added that the organisation plans to be an advocacy group that would fight for the right of women to be placed in strategic positions of power, board rooms where policy decisions are being made.
She said the organisation has so far trained 50 women on entrepreneurship and capacity building.
“Before the end of the year, we hope to have touched 300 women in capacity building,” she said.
“Empowering a woman is like empowering a nation, and we don’t just want to launch for lip service sake, we have done training for 50 women this week, we did a little bit of entrepreneurship and capacity building for these women,” she further said.
She stated that women in business were trained on products packaging and how to market their products online and on social media platforms, while those that do not have businesses on key decision making before establishing a business.
“Right now we are leveraging on volunteering, we are partnering with individuals, corporate bodies, organisations including the government to advocate for our course,” she noted.
On subsequent training plans, she said, the NGO has short, medium, and long-term plans on building capacity of women, adding that two or three more training would be carried out in other states in the country.
Also speaking, Stella Okotete, executive director -business development, Nigeria Export-Import (NEXIM) Bank, lauded the initiative and said it is timely as Nigerian women would benefit from the organisation.
“This is coming at a time where we need more women to be empowered as well as the girl child, the formation stage for any girl child in this country requires a lot of motherly support and when we empower the women, they will be able to give that support to the girl child,” she said.
“From our position as NEXIM, we have the women and youth export facility, we will be collaborating with her to see where we can upscale women in trade and go into export,” she further said.
“Most of her participants are into agro-allied related businesses, and export in Nigeria is what will help us diversify the economy away from oil and non-oil export is the way to go,” she added.
