One of the criticisms against sponsored skills acquisition and empowerment interventions is that they train participants but fail to provide the wherewithal beneficiaries require to put their newly acquired skills to productive use.
Oftentimes, targets participants attend skills acquisition and empowerment programmes, only to end up unable to convert the knowledge to actual financial value due to a lack of operational resources necessary for them to truly feel the impact of such programmes.
This challenge becomes even more daunting when it comes to skills acquisition and empowerment programmes designed for women and girls. The general assumption is that once they acquire skills, beneficiaries will automatically go ahead and generate income from the skills they acquired. However, in most cases, the skills programmes fail to evaluate the success rate, resulting in a situation whereby interventions have no verifiable evidence of effectiveness.
Mindful of this critical challenge, one non-governmental organisation is taking the bull by the horn to ensure that its skills acquisition programme for women and children translate into actual economic empowerment.
Through its Project START, Mumsbooth, an NGO which focuses on entrepreneurship and vocational training for women and children, has offered free training to over 12,000 women and children across Nigeria and other African countries in the past six years.
Established in 2017, Mumsbooth prides itself on the successes recorded in its empowerment programme and measures its achievement against the rate of beneficiaries who have actually used the skills acquired to set up thriving businesses.
At its 5th anniversary celebration held in Abuja in 2021, Mumsbooth’s Founder, Mrs Martha Tawiyah, emphasised the importance of helping beneficiaries of empowerment programmes start their businesses.
“Of all the women we have trained, we can say over 50 per cent of them have gone on to start their businesses and are doing well. One of the things we do is to not only train them but also follow them up through our community we have created online where we network, motivate, monitor and help the women.
“Some parents are also constantly sharing their testimonies with us. They talk about how their kids are keen on learning a skill, constantly asking to learn further and practice what they have learned. A few other kids speak of businesses they have started with the supervision of their parents,” she said.
At its recent 21st Edition of Project START in Accra, Ghana, Mumsbooth empowered over 300 women. The programme did not only focus on training participants in catering, tailoring, beads making, soap making, event management, makeup art and ankara fabrics making; it also focused on helping participants to learn how to turn the skills they had learnt into thriving businesses.
Tawiyah told journalists at the event that participants were taught and encouraged to keep pushing and striving to overcome common obstacles women and children face in Africa.
She also urged African governments, organisations and individuals to take skills training seriously and work towards empowering women with skills they could utilise as sources of livelihood and empowerment capable of creating a ripple effect on the national economy.
Joana Nyarkoa Agyepong, one of the beneficiaries of the Accra event, said she looked forward to empowering other women. “Having had the passion for event planning and management for so many years, today, through Mumsbooth training, I have had the opportunity to learn more to increase my knowledge about events planning and I hope to impact others too.”
Another beneficiary, Kate Cheetham Mensah, said the training was an eye-opener. “I have been able to unlearn certain things and also, I made friends and expanded my network. It was an educative programme.”
The Mumsbooth Empowerment Initiative’s model of skills acquisition is particularly important because there is evidence to show that empowerment training programmes do not necessarily translate into empowered beneficiaries. Without psycho-social support, life skills training and, most importantly post-training economic support integrated into such skills acquisition programmes, such initiatives end up failing to transform beneficiaries’ lives.
More often, participants who completed skills courses were soon confronted with the reality of skills gained not matching the demands of the workforce and with prohibitively high market entrance costs.
Without the kind of effort Mumsbooth is putting into its empowerment initiative, beneficiaries do not have the opportunity to apply the skills acquired.
Project START by Mumsbooth has benefitted women and children across Nigeria and Africa. In Nigeria, cities such as Abuja, Kano, Jos, Uyo and Dutse benefitted from the initiative. Other African cities such as Kampala and Mbale in Uganda, Mandera in Kenya and Accra in Ghana have also been impacted.
