The women of the Magboro Makogi community will not be forgetting the month of August in a hurry. Through a Coca-Cola Foundation-sponsored program; Catalyst For Change, over 1,000 women were, over four weeks, trained on relevant skills with more than 200 empowered to start their own businesses.
It is not news that in Nigeria, there are twice as many women below the poverty line than men, and with the outbreak of COVID-19, it became even more pertinent to provide women with opportunities to become financially independent.
A Nigerian based NGO, Karis and Eleos Hand of Hope Foundation, recognised this gap and sought to fill it. The Foundationlauched a capacity building program tagged, “Catalyst for Change”, to help equip 5000 women with relevant vocational skills and business training across five locations in Lagos State. With funding from The Coca-Cola Foundation, the program has seen a total of 1,048 trained in relevant skills with over 200 of them receiving kits to kickstart their own businesses.
In addition to providing vocational skills training, the women of the Magboro Makogi community were also schooled on how to access grants and loans for their businesses by The Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN).
Over the next few months, Catalyst for Change will visit the Sangotedo, Iwaya, Oworonshoki, and Ogijo communities to continue this good work. By the end of this community-wide outreach, the Foundation will have empowered 5,000 women with relevant skills while providing 1,000 of them with Start-up Kits to begin their own businesses.
Karis and Eleos Hand of Hope Foundation is a non-profit established in 2017, with a vision to empower women and girls across the rural demographic. The funding of the Catalyst for Change programme by The Coca-Cola Foundation will help Coca-Cola achieve its 5by20 initiative to empower 5 million women economically by the end of 2020.
The Coca-Cola Foundation has, since its inception in 1984, contributed more than $1 billion to help empower women, protect the environment, and enhance communities, socially and economically, around the world.
