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Inspiring Women Leaders in Africa   
Aug. 23, 2011 —“I want to see economic justice achieved by women,” says Jovita Mlay, a Global Women in Management (GWIM) participant from Tanzania. “I want to see women become more independent,” says Rita Bassiey Edet a participant from Nigeria. These two participants joined 24 other women leaders in Abuja, Nigeria. Upon arrival, the women were asked to list their “highest hopes” on sheets of paper that line the training room. Those hopes have become the goals and objectives fueling the month-long workshop in Nigeria’s capital city. As hundreds of women before them who participated in GWIM workshops, these women leaders are determined to increase both their leadership and management skills. The women come from Angola, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Ghana, Nigeria, Tanzania and Uganda. They leave their families and jobs for a month in order to elevate themselves and the communities they serve. The workshop is designed to build on participants’ leadership potential, inspire the use of new technologies, and strengthen the project management and technical skills needed to run an organization. Generously funded by ExxonMobil since 2005, there have been 16 GWIM workshops in Brazil, Cameroon, Egypt, Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria and the United States, reaching over 500 leaders from 59 countries under this partnership.
The workshop encompasses huge global concepts such as fundraising and advocacy as well as the foundations of good project management such as writing a business plan. Participants are challenged to engage in activities that will stretch their skills and abilities. Each morning two participants are asked to make a presentation on their organizations and field questions from their colleagues. They also engage in role plays and group exercises throughout the day where they support and encourage one another. They form bonds that will last beyond the four weeks of the workshop. The participants observe first-hand the strength of the relationships they are forming from the CEDPA alumni from Nigeria who visited the workshop, and two other African alumni who facilitated during the workshop, Soukaye Dieng and Lucy Owusu-Darko. The CEDPA alumni shared their experiences during the workshop and after, including information on CEDPA’s innovative coaching program. Many of the alumni provided the participants with encouraging words. “You will leave here with a fire in your belly that you will be forced to do something about,” said Chief Imo Isemin, CEDPA alumna and founder of Uforo Small Business Network. Chief Imo credits the GWIM workshop with giving her the ability to organize and focus Uforo into the successful NGO it is today. Inspired by the words of their predecessors, many of the participants have vowed to reach out to 100 women with step down trainings of the lessons they are learning during the workshop. They have come to embrace CEDPA’s motto, even putting it to music and raising their voices in passionate harmony: “When women move forward, the world moves with them.” |
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