Five Women Share over N1m Business Grants at DDWIN Empowerment Programme

At the weekend, five Nigerian business women all smiled to the bank after sharing N1,250,000 during the maiden edition of Dear Dammy Women’s Initiative (DDWIN) business conference and empowerment programme aimed at helping women.

The programme with the theme Business Growth in Challenging Times, saw different speakers addressing over 100 women that came for the event that took place at the Oriental Hotel, VI, Lagos.

According to one of the speakers, Opeyemi Makinwa, there is need for women to engage more in business as she highlighted some of the key to success in business.

“There is need for you to know your target audience and also make good use of your time,” she said.

“As an entrepreneur, you must learn to rest, eat well and be positive all the time. You must also celebrate little wins while also trying your best to delegate duties because you cannot do everything alone.”

Speaking with our correspondent, the conveyer of the programme, Damilare Alabi, a Managing Director of one of the leading betting companies in Nigeria, Nairabet, said she decided to put up the empowerment programme so as to help women, something that has been her passion.

She added that with the maiden edition done and dusted, the event will become an annual one with more women expected to gain from it.

Alabi said: “This is our maiden event but our goal is to empower about 1000 women in the next two years. The objective of this maiden event is to get the word out there and get women to key into the vision.

“The response has been good and obviously women need empowerment, role models and that is why you can see the turnout was great.

“It is not about thee people getting grants alone, we have those that have come to offer knowledge to people and also most especially to learn from those that have been on the same part before.

“I have a passion for business and helping people and I discovered that my passion is to help women. That is the reason for this initiative with free education and business grants.

“We gave out a total of N1,250,000 in grants to five women. This will be an annual event but we will have other smaller events maybe online with women being enrolled in training.”

On how the recipients of the grants were arrived at, Alabi said there was a panel set up to look into what the women really wanted to use the money for and those with genuine and reasonable ventures were picked.

With over 300 people requesting for grants, she said it was a very tough process to pick just five. She however hope that with time, the organization can do more.

Ayodeji Michael-Oni, Ntoka Fumnanya, Ameenat Yusuf, Omolara Lawrence and Ariyike Ottun all went home with grant of N250,000 each at the end of the seminar.

Other speakers at the event are Tamara Posibi, Oyin Bernard, Ify Mogekwu, Olashile Makinwa and Akin Alabi.