OLEJU ENTERPRISE

OLEJU

THE PROBLEM

Statistics on poverty in Nigeria indicate that 70 percent of poor Nigerians are women. Indeed more than a half of rural women live below the nationally defined poverty line, lacking access to basic education, decent nutrition, adequate health, useful skills and social services (University of Benin Journal). Nigerian women, like their counterparts in developing countries perform complex multiple roles as mothers, workers and managers of households, taking care of their husbands, children and members of their extended families. They perform the majority of the work load domestically and dominate the rural and urban informal sector activities. Yet less than 20 percent of women own their own sustainable businesses or possess the right skill to generate income. Women in the towns are engaged predominantly in the informal sector, in commerce and distributive trade, while most in semi urban towns are either petty traders or vocational skill based women. In Nigeria, poverty is concentrated among unemployed women, small households, households headed by informal sector workers, homes headed by women and elderly persons without social safety nets (FOS, 1999). Poverty is a state of deprivation and is manifested in illiteracy, lack of access to water, poor housing and declining purchasing power. Poverty has deepened in Nigeria over the last decades and many Nigerians, especially women, are worse off today than they were in decades ago. The incidence, depth and severity of poverty have tasked to the limit the ability of the extended family to serve as a safety net to the extent that poverty reduction strategies in the country are synonymous with economic growth and development strategies. Hence poverty reduction is one of the most urgent tasks facing the government.

OUR SOLUTION

OLEJU is an initiative of RUDERF that creates a safe and enabling environment for women to thrive through vocational skill based businesses. OLEJU provides access to training, employment opportunity, business incubation support and micro loans to rural women to thrive.

OUR APPROACH

We establish entrepreneurship hubs in rural communities, where we implement our solutions. Our hubs are led by indigenous women who have experiences similar to our beneficiaries and are rightly motivated to work with like women towards changing their narrative. Our approach gives these women the opportunity to gain new and marketable skills; and more importantly we teach them to use their skills to make products that can be exchanged or sold for money and sustain their businesses, and also gives them the opportunity to own their solutions thereby restoring social pride to them.

Women who successfully complete their training are offered employment or alternatively signed up for a 1 year business contract where we incubate their businesses at OLEJU Entrepreneurship Hub. We go further to create markets from the finished product through our multiple sales channels and strategies. 70% of profit from sales is returned to beneficiaries as income and 30% is used for sustainability of the hub.
Our approach gives these women the opportunity to gain new and marketable skills; and more importantly we teach them to use their skills to make products (value) that can be exchanged or sold for money, and also own their solutions thereby restoring social pride to them.

IMPACT REVIEW

Till date, OLEJU has the following measurable and sustainable impact grouped into quantitative and qualitative aspects.

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