Women Work Wonders

The pandemic, fear of unemployment and nationwide protests have failed to deter the ‘Women Work Wonders’ team in their mission to provide strong professional networking support to unemployed, rural women. Over the past two months Margaret, Samson, Akande and Comfort have made significant progress with the Agbado community.

      1. Advocacy visit to build trust with the local community.

       To ensure that community support is provided throughout the implementation of the project, the religious leaders, women leaders and the ward development community leaders were visited and apprised of the benefits of the project. The team was welcomed with great respect and complete support was assured, and a total of 25 community leaders were reached through this activity. 

    2.Community mapping of Agbado Community of Ifo Local Government Area of Lagos State       Axis/Suburb.

 A mapping of the geographical and socio-economic situation of the Agbado community was undertaken to understand the pain points of local women, the spread of industries and availability of infrastructure.

Young women in the community who could not migrate to industrial areas of the state take to petty trading and illicit sexual behavioural activities, while their male counterparts’ engage in ‘Okada’ (motor-bike and tricycle)riding and drug abuse.Testimonials by a few ward development council (WDC) members and some stakeholders in the community further strengthen these observations.Urban migration, demand for skilled labor and lack of skills among these women further contribute to their poor economic conditions.

Majority of the women pursue self-employment(clothing, food/beverages, restaurant, bakery, domestic gas fillers, arts and design, saloon) and the majority of them are domestic/local trades. Few were found to be formally employed in the state workforce as public school teachers, healthcare workers and clerks.

    3.Training of research assistants (RA) for community survey.

 A total of 8 (6 female, 2 male) RA (out of 26 applications) were selected based on their educational qualification, familiarity with the local environment, prior experience and recommendation of the prospective collectors. The RAs task was to travel across the length and breadth of the community and survey potential female participants and mentors (industries) and collect preliminary information:

Industries:

• Name, sector and age of the enterprise
• Domestic/international?
• Contact details
• Major job roles in demand
• Skills required
• Total no. of employees
• Salary range of employees
• Career progression
• Source of hiring
• What are the challenges in hiring?
• What help would they need to tackle their challenges?
• Are they willing to provide On the job training to women for a period of 6 months?
• Would they be able to hire these women or connect them with employers in their network?

Potential participants:

• Age
• Marital status (If single, any prospects of getting married in the next 1 year?)
• Access to internet, email, WhatsApp and a smartphone
• Educational background?
• Langauges spoken
• Professional experience
• Employment Status
• Required training
• Lost any job due to the outbreak of the pandemic?
• Nature of job lost during the pandemic
• What venture does she want to start? 
• Preferred duration of training
• Name 2-3 local industries she wants to work at
• Would she be willing to participate in an online networking/mentoring session?

The RAs were trained and tested for interpersonal, community navigational and communication skills and to ensure that confidentiality of the information collected will be maintained.

    4.Community survey of participants and industries

 The community survey was conducted between 14th and 22nd December 2020 by the 8 research assistants with guidance of the support team. The settlements covered during data collection were Ore Merin, -Dalemo,  Ishaga Abosule, -Agbado Oja, Ifako Ijaye, Akeera,    and  Adiyan in and around Agbado.A total of 300 women and 15 employers were surveyed, 4 more women reached the team via flyers and word-of-mouth.

Key points from the survey:

• To prevent communal conflict and ensure trust the RAs were deployed to locations he/she was familiar with. This also ensured quick assessment of women who truly need intervention, are available at their residence
• RAs were trained to use the ‘GPS waypoints’ application.This helped i) in preventing swerving into another community ii) ensuring that such activities truly happened in that location iii) aid quick identification of prospective participants when selections are finally made.
• Daily monitoring and evaluation exercises were carried out by the project team to ensure compliance with ethical procedures. These included i) frequent visits to sites ii) monitoring the sites with google earth map and iii) spot-checking of respondents through phone calls.
• Daily validation and data cleaning were also carried out by the data entry clerk. 

Analysis:

Participants:

• Average age: 29 years
• 58% of the women use WhatsApp/Facebook
• 54% of the women were unemployed
• 88% of the women surveyed have completed at least secondary education
• Sales, hairstyling, trading, teaching and tailoring were the most common jobs lost due to the pandemic.
• 56% of the women wished to train between 4 to 6 months
• 68% of the women wished to train at least for 4 days a week

Employers:

• 93% of the employers are in the services sector (Food & Beverages, Beauty & Wellness sectors)
• Major job roles in demand : baking, hairstyling (Ghana weaving and wigs making, makeover) and tailoring related services.
• Average number of employees : 8
• Average salary: 17500NGN per cycle of service delivery.
• Challenges faced  by employers: tardiness, lack of motivation
• 13 employers expressed interest in providing On-the-job training for a period of 6 months, and 11 of them showed interest in hiring the women post training or helping them find employment 

    5. Scoring of applicants

After data collection, the project team formulated a scoring grid to select 10 potential women participants. Scoring grid:

1. Educational qualification (Answer - Score)

NFE - 0

Primary - 1

Secondary -2

Tertiary - 3

2. Employment status

Not employed - 3

Employed - 0

Self employed- 2

3. Job loss due to the pandemic

Yes- 2

No- 0

4. Currently working?

Yes - 0

No - 2

5. Willingness to participate in mentorship

Yes - 2

No - 0

6. Willingness to be mentored outside her community

Yes - 2

No - 0

7.Hours proposed for daily mentorship

8. Days

9. Months

10. Possesses a smartphone.

Yes - 2

No- 0

11. Uses WhatsApp/Facebook

Yes -2

No - 0

12. Uses Linkedin

Yes - 2

No-  0

6 women scored 29, 27 and 26 respectively and the remaining 4 women will be picked from a list of 9 women who scored 25 (based on their availability and willingness to participate). The team hopes that all the women who participated in the survey and expressed interest to join the platform will subsequently be onboarded during future implementations.

Launch of our social media page:

To keep our supporters updated on all the activities happening on field, we have created a Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/WWWNigeria.

Get in touch with us at : womenworkwondersNG@gmail.com

With lots of love,

Team Women Work Wonders

Links:

• Women Work Wonders, Nigeria page