Women Work Wonders

At the outset, a big thank you to all of our donors for believing in our initiative and supporting us! The team of ‘Women Work Wonders’ spread across two continents are psyched to kickstart the implementation in the Agbado community in Lagos, Nigeria.

 Public health educator, an M&E officer, a Social Mobilization Consultant, a Health and Safety trainer , all in Lagos, Nigeria and a Melton Fellow in Bangalore, India have one thing in common - passion for empowering and enabling women from low and middle income groups to choose a career they love and care about and to support them!

 Margaret, the project implementation lead in Lagos and I, Ranjini have worked together since October to create a supporting ecosystem on the field and create awareness among community leaders and focal members.

We are a family!

Since the incorporation of the support team, we all have become part of a virtually connected family passionate about seeing women with financial autonomy and making strong career choices regardless of geography, economic backgrounds! The team members are:

 1. Ranjini

Women Work Wonders is envisioned as a robust offline complement to online networking platforms and aims at hand holding women through their career journeys, says Ranjini, a fellow of public policy and management with IIM-Bangalore in Karnataka, India.

Career Highlight - Led a team of 5 developers for a flagship CRM project at a digital insurance firm for 1 year in Bangalore, India and is also a IIIE Juniper Networks WeTech 2017-18 scholar.

2. Margaret

 I would like to see women have financial autonomy regardless of their background, says Margaret, a public health educator and social entrepreneur with more than 5 years of work experience in advocacy, counseling, public health education and sensitization! 

Career Highlight - Increased use of health care services by 35% through referral of clientsto the nearest Health Centre for the uptake of modern and safe contraceptive methods, as a social mobilization volunteer with 'The Challenge Initiative', Ogun State in 2019.

3. Comfort

 I will use my experience on community mobilization and outreaches to help the group in actualizing its goals, says Comfort, a facilitator for health and safety training sessions at Designated Concept Limited. 

Career Highlight - Nigerian Christian Corpers federation, Kwara State Award for Meritorious service in 2017.

4. Samson

 A social mobilization and behavioural change consultant at Center for Communication and Social Impact  with more than 5 years of work experience in M&E, data analytics and community mobilization.

Career Highlight - Reduced mortality rate through effective project management at CRS and coordinated a project that educated over 100,000 people on malaria prevention at Africare from 2015-17.

5. Akande

 The strength to face new challenges is an important outcome of developmental projects, believes Akande,an M&E officer for the Bode Akindele YIELD Initiative in Oyo State and has more than 4 years of experience doing research & evaluation of social projects and conducting community outreach programs.

Career Highlight - Participated in writing evidence-based report which lead to supporting granting of over $30,000 for TB service improvement in Nigeria in 2017 as an M&E officer for African Regional Health Education Centre (ARHEC),Ibadan, Oyo State.

While our work on field over the past few weeks has been affected owing to nationwide protests, the team has managed to tide over logistical challenges and kick-off certain activities as follows:

1. Creating a timeline for the Stage-1 of the implementation plan
2. Hiring and onboarding of a local support team of 4 members.
3. Meeting with the focal persons in the communities to create awareness about the program and to collect inputs on identifying collaborative community leaders and working with them.                               
4. Identification of stakeholder communities such as women leaders, youth learners, CDC, WDC and youth leaders.
5. Creating a comprehensive questionnaire to survey at least 500 women from the Agbado community during the community outreach program.

With the situation on ground in Lagos getting back to normalcy and institutions such as banks, community halls as such being reopened, we hope to resume our mobilisation efforts during the second week of November. With all your support, we are able to confidently plan and arrange resources required to mobilise industries, community leaders, women and the volunteers and to support them commensurately and reward them for their efforts!

Links:

• Melton Foundation- WomenWorkWonders Lagos project details