For Rashidat, hope rises again
Mercy Corps is a global team of humanitarians who partner with communities, corporations and governments to transform lives around the world.
Their mission is to alleviate suffering, poverty and oppression by helping people build secure, productive and just communities.
They believe in investing in young women like Rashidat. They help them gain skills, build livelihoods and reach their goals, unleashing their potential to improve their lives and become leaders for their families and the world.
Rashidat was forced to drop out when she was just 7 years old.
“I lost my parents,” she explains. “That is when I stopped schooling.” She moved in with her aunt and uncle, but wasn’t able to return to her education.
As she grew older she faced more obstacles: access to job training and banking services is limited for girls, too. But even when her options to succeed were bleak, she never lost hope. “I always believed I would be great,” she says.
Her life took a turn when she got involved in Mercy
Corps job training program, made possible with support from The Coca-cola Company, Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth and the UK Department for International Development. The program provides in-and out-of-school girls in Nigeria with life skills, business training and financial education, so they are better equipped to support themselves and their families.
“My favorite topic is how to start a business with small capital and loan taking,” Rashidat says, “... because I never knew about it before. When I learned that, I saw a way forward.”
Empowered with knowledge and inspired by her love of fashion, she started putting small amounts of money away whenever she could, eventually saving enough to buy tools and beads to start a small jewellerymaking business.
Already, her handmade accessories include necklaces, bracelets, belts, purses are in high demand. “I’m always happy when I see people wearing my beads,” she says. “I will look at them and say ‘I am the one who did this.’ I feel proud of myself.”
Now, Rashidat has plans to expand. “I want to have a shop. I want to have a business card. I want to be great,” she says. Her business is so successful she’s even hired several other young women and taught them how to bead, though she hopes they eventually leave to start their own ventures, too.
“There are so many things girls can become in the future,” she says. “Girls are talented. There is nothing you give a girl that she cannot do.”