Project ASHA’s ‘Thread of Change’ Event Illuminates Critical Challenges Faced By Women In Creative Industry

Oluchi Chibuzor

Project ASHA successfully hosted its ‘Thread of Change’ event, a pivotal gathering designed to connect women in the creative industry to opportunities, provide platforms for their diverse stories, and foster a robust support system across Lagos State.

The event, which was supported by the British Council, also facilitated engaging, cross-generational conversations on the evolution of storytelling and the unique challenges encountered by women in the creative sector.

Speaking at the event, held recently in Lagos, Programmes Lead ProjectASHA, Joseph Waribugo, highlighted the organization’s commitment to not only creating connecting points but also building platforms for skill development.

Waribugo, said that Project ASHA is actively implementing and planning a range of initiatives to address these identified challenges.

He said that Project ASHA is directly tackling the technical skill gap through its digital hub project, which provides women with free digital literacy skills at a dedicated center in the Solo community.

He noted that to overcome financial access barriers, the NGO offers empowerment programs and guides women towards local investors, while also assisting women in writing grants to secure funding from various organizations.

According to him, “Beyond the Thread of Change event, Project ASHA plans to host more creative sessions, bringing together women builders, fashion designers, storytellers, poets, actors, and musicians to discuss challenges and create safe spaces for them. These spaces will also cater to healing and emotional well-being.

“The organization aims to expand its support beyond the approximately 50 women currently served across various Lagos communities. Project ASHA is actively seeking partnerships with more organizations, including the British Council for initiatives like the Creative Showcase. Future plans include opening up bigger, free fashion showcases for designers to exhibit their work.”

Waribugo underscored that empowering a woman creates a profound ripple effect, leading to more opportunities for herself, enhanced care for her children, and the cultivation of a more sustainable lifestyle overall.

“So at Project ASHA, we are beyond creating connecting points, we are also building platforms where they can learn skills. For example, our digital hub project, which connects women to digital literacy skills is for free. We have a center at the Isolo community where women come, they get trained, and they also benefit from digital skills to bridge that gap. Next, in terms of access to finance, we have empowerment programmes but we as a non-profit, we cannot do all of it by ourselves.

“So we are open to people who are excited about these kinds of things. Creating opportunities for women in tech, for women in education, opportunities for women for economic empowerment. Whereby when you empower a woman, she’s able to transform that into a ripple effect. They can create more opportunities for themselves, cater to their kids, and build a more sustainable lifestyle in general,” he said.

The event also prominently featured men as allies in order to underscore their crucial role in advancing women’s inclusion and empowerment.

According to Waribugo “We also brought men as allies to the table because we cannot talk about women inclusion, empowerment, and anything of such without bringing men to the table. Today’s event was really empowering because we had conversations that are cross-generational. How has storytelling been in the time past and how are they doing it now?

“What are the unique challenges women in the creative industry face and how are they creating solutions for themselves? Beyond creating solutions for themselves, how are men contributing to the solutions that they are creating? Right, so today’s event is all about inclusivity.”

The ‘Thread of Change’ event marks a significant step in Project ASHA’s broader mission to cultivate a supportive and inclusive creative ecosystem in Lagos.

With several women sharing their experiences, they expressed challenges hindering the creative sector.

On a lack of inclusivity, especially for Persons with Disabilities, founder of Mixdecor, Osabouhien Oluchi Mary, a digital creator, passionately articulated the critical need for inclusivity in every aspect.

She emphasized the severe lack of suitable infrastructure for persons with disabilities, citing her personal struggle to renew her passport due to the absence of facilities for individuals unable to provide fingerprints.

She stressed that seeing other persons with disabilities thrive in creative spaces provides invaluable courage and inspiration.

She further advocated for education in schools to dismantle stereotypes and stigma associated with disability, while expressing a perceived lack of adequate government assistance for the creative industry.

According to her, “One of the loopholes that I noticed in the industry is the fact that there’s little to none of what’s called inclusivity. They always want to include you, probably when you’re already up there, but at least include people. A lot of people, let’s say people with disabilities need push. It’s easier for persons without disabilities to say, oh, you’re great, because you can really not relate to what a person with a disability is going through.”

Giving her perspectives, the Founder, Modeal Clothiers, Mosunmola Alatishe, was the dearth of essential skillsets among young people, particularly within the fashion industry.

Alatishe noted the difficulty in finding technically knowledgeable workers and advocated for more accessible training programs to bridge this gap.

“Access to finance and markets is very critical for women in the creative industry, many of whom are entrepreneurs, face considerable hurdles in accessing finance and markets to showcase their innovative ideas. But one that is worrisome is the skill gaps in the sector. When you employ people you are doing so because only you cannot do the job as when it comes to technical aspects they cannot give you what you want. So we need to pay more attention to vocational schools,” Alatishe said.

ProjectASHA is a non- governmental organization (NGO) registered in Nigeria as Vweta Chadwick ASHA Empowerment Foundation and have been operating since 2014 as a support group creating strategies and the enabling conditions for the empowerment and capacity development of vulnerable girls, women, and people with disability (PWD) from underserved communities to be productive members of our society.