COFFHA Endows 120 Female Entrepreneurs with Digital Skills
In a bid to ensure female entrepreneurs are fully equipped for the 21st century global world through the use of technology and digital tools to work independently. Committee of Friends of Humanity in collaboration with Google Africa recently organized da
Committee of Friends for humanity (COFFHA), through the Google digital training for female entrepreneurs, aims to promote successful entrepreneurship and improve the business environment for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) so that women, especially, can realise their full potential in today’s global economy.
More fundamentally, in order to seize the new opportunities that digital technologies are opening in many areas, individuals especially entrepreneurs have to develop the right set of skills to make a meaningful use of these technologies to grow their businesses.
This was the main reason why COFFHA gathered women from its database to take advantage of the opportunity offered by Google.
About 120 entrepreneurs were trained at Hallmark Nursery/Primary School, Ikeja, Lagos, on how to grow their businesses using various digital tools. The SMEs owners received free training on the use of digital devices and were exposed to e-commerce, and social media marketing.
The training also equipped the participants on the use of Google Insight and social media to improve business operation. The participants also gained knowledge on how to use YouTube for customer interaction and Google+ Business for optimisation and to target customers.
Participants with business links were registered on Google My Business, an Internetbased service for business owners operated by Google, alongside the digital skills training, to improve the visibility of their businesses on Google Search and help grow their customer base.
Google My Business network was launched in June 2014 as a way of giving business owners more control of what shows in the search results when someone searches a given business name.
Speaking on how essential the digital training by Google is to the women that were trained and on what digital skills can do for business entrepreneurs, the President and Co-founder of COFFHA, Chief (Mrs) Carolyn Akuma Ufere, said, “Digital skill is very important for small scale businesses and in fact for any business at all.
“But for these women who are into small scale businesses, we have been in the business of empowering women and this is one of those particular projects that we have this year whereby we are partnering Google to train women on digital skills. We are proud to do this because we believe it will improve their businesses skills and it will also increase customers base.”
Speaking further, Ufere said, “At the same time, there are various types of social media these days and they would leverage on the digital skills they have acquired through this training to be able to make sure that their businesses achieve that widespread that they need to progress speedily. So the skill they acquire here will help them put their businesses on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and the rest of others that will enable a lot of people see what they are offering and thereby patronise them.”
“Basically, why we are ensuring that they acquire this skill is because things are changing. So many people don’t have shops any more. You see government breaking down buildings that house shops and offices probably because the owner of these buildings don’t have approved plan for the building they put up.
“As a result, small scale entrepreneurs are out of business. So, how do they ensure that their businesses still thrive even without outlets? This brings us to where we are today. We have to train them on digital skill so that they are able to go on the internet, create a site and then begin to put a face and a name to your businesses.”
Ufere explained further that most importantly, digital skills acquired will help those who operate form their various homes, adding, “most of these women are housewives
and their children are still small. So, while their husbands are out to their various place of work, and they need to be useful to themselves because being self-employed give them confidence and also boost their self-esteem.
“So, with this training, they don’t need to have an office to be in business in this 21st century; just have that skill and you are set to go. You can even make billions from the comfort of your homes than someone who has an office where she goes every day and pay all the bills. Having a digital skill helps them to maximise profits and also save a lot of money. So, they would learn a lot from acquiring this skill”.
The training, Ufere revealed further was free for all the beneficiaries. “It is a free training and this is part of our goals in COFFHA. You know, we are involved in empowering women, especially widows and then we give them start-up packs to start up their businesses and a whole lot of them have improved and moved beyond the small scale business we started for them.
“For Google, it is part of their CSR but for us at COFFHA, it is what we have always been into – empowering women generally, making women to have the confidence, ability and capacity to be who they want to be and also be able to operate from their various homes, being the self-confident women that they are supposed to be”, the COFFHA President noted.
While confirming that 120 women were trained on digital skills and that COFFHA had a database of all of them to ensure it monitored their progress and how the training has impacted on their various businesses, Ufere added, “train a woman, you train a nation. Increase the economic power base of a woman and the entire family is feeding”.
She noted further that all that was required for the women to be part of the training was any of their utility bills, tax paper or certificate of distribution, which were requirement by Google to enable them get enlisted on the “Google My Business” platform, which will more or less make these women’s businesses visible, so that when any one googles, they would find the business names is already on the internet.
COFFHA President who said it took only some efforts to get the women where they are today, added, “It took some months for us to plan for the training. We had to register with Google and we were validated to be able to be in this partnership. We didn’t pay anything to Google. It is completely free and Google is also helping in giving them lunch which comes with drinks and water. So, when you are costing COFFHA, it is only on putting up the logistic for setting up the venue for the training and fortunately for us, the venue we used, Hallmark Nursery/Primary School, Ikeja, Lagos, was provided for us free of charge by the Director of the Hallmark School. She also made available the projector and speakers for us.”
Her advice for women entrepreneurs, especially those running small scale businesses was: “Be very focused; have proper business plans, ensure you register you businesses and also be sure that you never use the capital base of your business but sustain it. Because when you derail from your focus, you would start touching the capital base of the business you are running and that is a sure way of failing. But when you plan very well and you know where you are going and you increase your network, success is sure for you.
“And this is what this training would achieve because the women are meeting one another and they would achieve some networking and also be able to complement what each of them is doing as well as make referral to one another.”
Highlighting on what informed the training and why was necessary for the women to tap into digital opportunities to run their business better, the Vice President of COFFHA, Ms Nckechi Ali Balogun, said, “We observed from our interactions with women that a lot of them lacked digital skills, especially the kind of women COFFHA is interested in – women who need empowerment and need to be trained in various vocational skills.
“We realised, especially looking at our environment, that these women cannot afford to pay for shops or office space, they cannot afford to connect with marketers, they cannot afford to connect with some high class programmes and they even lack knowledge on how to attend webinars, these are seminars conducted over the internet, which might be free of charge. So, when Google offered to train people on digital skills, we then said that we have a group of women that need to key into this”.
Balogun stressed further that COFFHA is poised to helping the average woman to have digital skill so that she can connect her business to the world, adding that, “You don’t have to own a shop to do your business, so, we want to teach them how to do their businesses online. We want to teach them how to grow a network of customers, we want to teach them how to negotiate and network with people online.”
To ensure that these women put the training into good use, Balogun revealed that COFFHA in partnership with Google, has a monitoring scheme that would do a continuous assessment on their progress.
“Incidentally, based on the key performance indicator that we have, which is the number of people that would be able to use Google and even connect online, we are also monitoring them. And then Google has promised to do assessment, evaluate them like on quarterly bases, know the people that are using the skills and tools provided and help them develop their businesses further”, she said.
Balogun revealed further that incidentally COFFHA does a thing like this annually. “We do health outreach too and last December, we gathered about 200 widows and carried out medical assessments on them.”
She hinted further that some of the beneficiaries of the Google digital training were from COFFHA data base while a few were sourced through the social media, adding, “we don’t want the same women to be coming all the time. Don’t forget that COFFHA is a network of women who are top-notch in the corporate world while a lot own businesses and are very high class and educated women in the society, so, we have a network of women who also make referrals for those who actually need such empowerment”.
While teaching participants on how best to make harness opportunities online, Head Brand & Reputation, Google Africa, Mojolaoluwa Aderemi Makinde, warned them not to be online because others are there, rather, define what is good for them then focus on the platform that works for them.
“Our goal is to ensure that our customers use the internet right and we’ve been doing it since 2016 for job seekers business owners, among others. It is our annual community service project, we also partner NGOs”, she added.