Empowering 250 Young Women in Nigeria

Most Nigerian girls have access to limited resources to support their dreams because of their inability to use computer and have access internet. This year WIDC made it part of our year projects to organize 6 weeks media training for 35 girls.

This project was organized for girls that are just coming out of high school after their final examination. WIDC first took these girls through our 4-day Agency-Based Empowerment workshop where the girls were able to be rooted in personal empowerment and spiritual consciousness.

The 4-day empowerment model, developed by the U.S.-based Empowerment Institute, teaches participants to shift their patterns of thinking from pathology to vision and equips them with tools to develop belief in themselves and their own agency, to set goals, and to create the support systems that will enable them to reach those goals.

It was after this empowerment workshop that the girls were divided into four groups for the media training because we could only provide 4 Laptops for the training. The media training becomes necessary because for these girls to reach the goals they have set for themselves during the workshop, they need to have access to resources that could help them to achieve these goals. Therefore, learning how to use computer which they were all handling for the first time becomes germane. Also access to internet and communities of women and girls like World Pulse becomes important for these girls to actually create the lives they want for themselves.

Within two weeks of our training 9 of these girls have created emails for themselves and they have joined world pulse communities. At the end of the eight  weeks training, 38 young girls was able to create emails for themselves, joined the social media, started posting stories on social medias. 11 of these girls have started accessing vocational training online. We are hoping to target 100 girls in our next training and we are hoping to get more laptops for the training.