We were featured on CGTN Europe!

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We were featured on CGTN Europe! 

We are excited that China Global Television Network (CGTN) Europe has done a story on WiLi Africa. Please watch this video as our founder and Chair Person, Maryam Baba Mohamed talks about how gender equity should be a human right, goal number one of the sustainable development goals (poverty eradication) and our areas of focus:

1. Education – through our community library and hub.
2. Protection – by providing legal services to women, girl-child and youth
3. Empowerment – through skills development
4. Mentorship
5. Food and Clothing – through fundraising initiatives, clothing drives, and community events to raise awareness and money.
We are grateful for the opportunity to continue to raise awareness for our many great initiatives!

Congratulations to Our Media Graduates!

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Congratulations to Our Media Graduates! 

Congratulations to the first cohort of young females who received a certificate for media training! WiLI in partnership with J16 sponsoring some incredibly ambitious young girls for media skills training so they can come off as confident, comfortable, and relaxed in media interviews, public speaking and crisis communication. Skills that will keep them well equipped to face the challenging economy and society!

Objectives

The program was delivered by Rejoice Shammah. The objectives were as follows: 

  • To provide Media Training for young women approaching the Media Advertising profession..
  • To train students who would like to improve their current employment while others would be trained to be ‘employable’ to make these young women more employable. 
  • To contribute to the Ecosystem by providing a constant flow of trainees/students who are well-trained with hands-on practical experience.

The program supports the participants not only with the skills but also a strong network that can create employment opportunities for youth to build the digital skills needed for the evolving digital economy.

It is expected that the opportunities are grounded in experiences that will prepare these young women to adapt to the major changes projected in tomorrow’s workplace, including emerging areas where the jobs may not yet exist such as those related to cybersecurity, the automation of knowledge tasks, big data, and artificial intelligence, among others.

The program is still an evolving initiative. WiLI contributes to the programming by supporting youth who are more or less job-ready but who may require some experience which will be made possible through skill development to enter and succeed in the labour market.

Testimonial 

The young women were selected because they are ambitious, driven women, who are already taking initiative to develop some tough social issues.

They were excited throughout the one month intensive program, connected with fellow media enthusiasts and dreamed about the future. The following is a testimonial of one of the graduates, Ruth Ki: 

“Yesterday I graduated from J16 Media Academy after an intensed learning for one Month.

The journey has been a great because I was privileged to meet amazing women whom I am certain that the relationship built will yield amazing results.

Thank to the director of J16 Media Academy Rejoice Shammah after this training I’m feeling like a presenter already.

If you hear me speak on a normal day like I’m hosting a radio show, don’t blame me o.. I don learn am.

Thanks to big sis Maryam Baba Mohammed of #WILIAFRICA for sponsoring me to attend this great Academy…. Trust me your investment on me is not a waste.

You can now call Ruth Ki the #MediaGirl“

 

WiLI is happy to have supported these incredible women and hopes to sponsor more young women, train them in multimedia journalism so they can tell their own stories and those of their communities. As well as give them practical tools, to convert their talents and passions into confidence and skills to progress in further education, employment and give a voice to the communities they live in!

Reading Adventures: Engaging Children In Local Libraries through Reading Clubs

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The theme for National Library Week (April 4-10, 2021), “Welcome to Your Library,” promotes the idea that libraries extend far beyond the four walls of a building – and that everyone is welcome to use their services.

As the first library to open in the area, WiLI Community Library and Hub is constantly expanding to offer opportunities for everyone to explore new worlds and become their best selves through access to technology, multimedia content, and educational programs. With that, we only thought it appropriate to kickstart National Library Week through a Reading Club for Children!

What is in a Library?

A library nourishes and sustains a community. It’s more than just a building; it is a means to bolster education, fight unemployment and to create social cohesion. Libraries are essential to a democratic society as they make the basic human right of freedom of access to information a reality. They are spaces of tolerance to all races, genders, classes and ages. They provide access to computers, free space, safer environments, learning materials and books, a quiet space for school children to do their homework and most importantly a team of valuable, knowledgeable librarians – which WiLI hires on a full time basis.

According to Hart, G (2004) in her research article, Public libraries in South Africa: agents or victims of educational change?, the five most common reason why school children visit libraries are:

  • To work on a project
  • To sit in the library to do homework
  • To use library materials to complete an assignment
  • To bring back or borrow a book.
  • For social reasons

The habit of reading never really gets ingrained in childhood. Our kids love leafing through books as toddlers, looking at the pictures. They may even enjoy reading as early elementary schoolers. But reading is hard work, and life offers so many other ways to entertain themselves that early reading often seems more like work than play. They never get to that delicious place where reading a good book is more fun than almost anything.

So how can you inspire a lasting love of reading?

We are very happy with our read and paint workshop! We’ve incorporated a couple elements to inspire a lasting love of reading: visiting the library and starting them off young! 

Business Skills Training for Women Entrepreneurs

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Business Skills Training for Women Entrepreneurs

We know what it’s like to start and grow a business, which is why we’ve developed training that delivers results. After all, knowledge is the best investment you can make in your business!

About half the nation’s population are Females of which a good percentage engage in entrepreneurial activities of the informal sector because they lack relevant skills to increase their potentials and further break into the formal sector.

Our business skills training features:

  • Practical, applicable skills that are 100% relevant to the successful operation of a small business.
  • A range of workshop topics known to be pivotal to small business success
  • Materials developed by industry experts, often featuring real-life storytellers, informative panelists or inspirational spotlights.
  • Different learning approaches including live workshops.
  • Working professionals.
  • We offer training for women entrepreneurs to help them learn and develop essential business skills to help them succeed in business.
  • We host free seminars and workshops – and 99% of participants rate our training as directly applicable to their business!
  • Our workshops are designed to educate and are geared towards women business owners’ learning styles.

There are three main objectives:

  1. There is a strong correlation between capacity building and skill development of Female entrepreneurs on their socio-economic empowerment
  2. Skills development and k=not knowing are the impediment toward building the capacity of female entrepreneurs
  3. Females can transfer the skills to others

Capacity Building and Skills Development

The importance of capacity building and skill development among the people of a society cannot be overemphasized. A nation cannot attain development if she neglects or refuses to put an impressive commitment on her human capital development. Capacity building is therefore, salient to the development of the individual and the nation at large.

Majority of folks are unable to cross the ladder of having an idea and actually executing on the idea. More so, as majority of them operate with little or no formal education, technical and expansion of skills
training. 

With your help, WiliAfrica can build capacity and develop skills which could enhance the productivity of female entrepreneurs.

Libraries in Development: Perceptions and Possibilities

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Libraries and its Importance in Development

As part of our long term plan, we had a vision and recently have started to see it come into fruition. Women in Leadership Initiative has rented a space to provide a community hub and library to the general public. 

Across Africa, libraries are contributing to development even though the work remains largely unrecognized by international stakeholders in development.

To bridge this gap, Women in Leadership Initiative are changing the current perceptions of libraries as we embark on this exciting new venture. Perceptions of libraries remain low and limited but allow for possible roles for libraries as community-embedded institutions and development resource hubs. 

Libraries have not historically been readily perceived as partners by the international development community. As an example from Namibia, libraries were initially left out entirely from a World Bank 15-year strategic plan for education, in spite of the natural connection between schools and libraries. Advocates were able to mobilize quickly and lobby successfully for libraries to be added later, but specific plans for library development are also notably absent from the country’s Vision 2030 development plan, despite an emphasis on “equal access to knowledge,” to “transform Namibia…to a knowledge-based economy”. 

Though the situation of libraries varies widely across different African countries, they tend not to play central roles within long term national development plans and this is both a symptom and cause of the lack of awareness of libraries in development.

Unfortunately, this tension between the potential of libraries and their lack of visibility is not new. African libraries have historically fought an uphill battle, wedged between external stakeholders and the communities they serve but not fully embraced by either.

Changing the Narrative

The current narrative of libraries as inherently colonial pigeonholes them and limits understandings of their role in supporting community-driven development. The perception of libraries as irrelevant and detached from the needs of their communities obscures their potential to act as intermediaries between communities and development organizations. 

To ensure that development is grounded in community needs. We need a better understanding of these recent efforts by libraries to re-align their programs to support their local communities in these ways, in spite of their history as colonial institutions.

Therefore, we will be going to Unity Schools to form bookclubs too. To encourage an early reading habit and we will be working with local community partners to provide Career Guidance, Mental Health Counselling and access to a wide variety of resources. 

 

What does the Future Hold? 

Women in Leadership Initiative is driven by the belief that development can be empowered by access to information.

We are building on the hope that libraries could assist in the mass education of the general population with the hopes that development organizations will give direct support.  Whereas many African libraries provided resources which were directed toward new science and technology information systems within governments and elite spaces, Women in Leadership Initiative rather than libraries for the public, reducing library support. 

Our primary aim is to provide information to development agents and agencies, to support formal and informal rural education programs through the provision of materials to both students and teachers, and to serve as centers of community education and cultural activities. 

We will maximize the utilization of local resources in order to compete in the world market. 

Thank you to all of our donors for your continued support! 

The Power of Sensitization

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WiLI Africa is constantly involved in programming. We love to be proactive and believe that parents need to find that balance of communicating with their children, while giving them space to find their own feet.

 

Should we talk, shouldn’t we, on unpleasant yet important subjects to our children? What is the right age to speak about the dangers of child trafficking, sexual abuse or sexual exploration and on other sensitive subjects? Would it lead to fear of the unknown or worse a fear psychosis? What if I too as an adult, am not comfortable dealing with the subject? All the above and more often work in our subconscious when it comes to communicating with our children on topics that are delicate or unhappy.

WiLI Africa provides a space where trained facilitators conduct child abuse sensitization programs. The objective is to sensitize the prime persons in a child’s life: parents, teachers and peers, who can bring a definite change in the intervention by reporting it early.

Child abuse is considered to be a universal problem and an epidemic in Nigeria. It has lifelong significant impacts nearly in all aspects of life. All victims need therapy and early intervention to prevent later symptomatology.

Children tend to face psychological, behavioral and social difficulties. This being the case, are all parents well-tuned to the happenings around the world? Do they live with the mindset that such things don’t happen to me or us and believe that this “ostrich-like” attitude is sufficient to protect their child from any misadventure

Will too much knowledge too soon lead to anxiety and fear psychosis?

No.

These programs are early interventions and it’s based on the notion of protect, suspect, inspect, collect and respect.

The hope is to eliminate the taboo and keep communication channels open so that the vulnerable (children) can have a voice. Is this something you would be interested in supporting? Please donate today to support Child Sensitization Programs and similar projects.