Rythm, Ahmadu Bello Foundation to Empower 400 Northern Nigeria Women

RYTHM Foundation, the Social Impact Initiative of QNET, is to partner with the Sir Ahmadu Bello Foundation to empower women and girls with financial literacy and business skills in disadvantaged communities in Northern Nigeria.

The Head of RYTHM, Santhi Periasamy said this in an interview with Voice of Nigeria, on the sidelines of V-CONVENTION Malaysia, a gathering of QNET’s Independent Representatives across the world.

She said a total of four hundred beneficiaries will be selected from the North central, North-west and North-eastern part of the country.

Periasamy explained that the goal of the project is to empower women and girls to create growth opportunities, and foster sustainable development through skills.

She noted that the project is a pilot scheme where beneficiaries will be trained on financial literacy, and how to run a small business.

“The beneficiaries will be selected from four locations in Northern Nigeria. Two in North-central, one each from Northeast and Northwest. Our Working partners will expose them to financial literacy, how to run small businesses such as making of soap, sanitary pads, farming, bags, hand crafts making and a whole lot according to the unique resources they have in their localities. They will be trained on how to generate income through management of small businesses,” she said

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According to Periasamy, the resources in the geographical location will determine what kind of skills people will be empowered with in order to get a livelihood for themselves and boost their confidence to become decision makers as leaders as well as a driving force in their families and communities.

She stressed that a need assessment was done by Ahmadu Bello Foundation to determine the type of intervention that will be given to each community.

For this reason, a Memorandum of Understanding will be signed by RYTHM and the foundation to kickstart the programme.

“The Sir Ahmadu Bello Foundation has done a comprehensive ground research on the needs assessment to advise the foundation on what the interactions will be. Soon we will be signing of the Memorandum of Understanding to kick off this project. The project is going to be about basically empowering these women from those disadvantaged communities.”

“I had an opportunity recently to actually go to Nigeria and meet our future partners from the foundation and visit all these locations. I was happy that I had the opportunity because the four locations that were shown to us were definitely in need of intervention we have been doing in other places,” Periasamy disclosed.

However, she also said that the communities may have a lot of common areas for intervention but the challenges could be heterogeneous in some ways.

“Most of them have not gone to school, most of them probably have no education but just a few years in primary school, and there are a lot of young girls who are exposed to danger and many sorts of violence. Some very vulnerable, they are not even able to protect themselves. So, this is exactly what we are hoping to do with the communities in Nigeria, because what happened in India was a huge success for you,” Head of RYTHM stated

Periasamy said the project will last for three years and “together with our partners, we will ensure that by the time we exit from the project these women will have enough money they can use to continue and sustain their businesses.” 

The RYTHM Foundation, ‘Raise Yourself to Help Mankind’ focuses on Education, Empowerment and Environment. It has aligned its efforts with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, and has collaborated with more than 135 partners since 2005 to execute over 75 transformative projects benefiting over 80, 000 people across the world.