The WHY?

The Equal Access DB Project is currently training 300 women from an IDP camp in Benue, Nigeria, using a cluster system to empower them financially with practical skills they can use to earn a living. This initiative aims to reduce sexual exploitation and abuse, where some women are forced to offer sex to get money to feed their families. Married women often struggle to afford necessities like salt due to a lack of purchasing power, and those in abusive marriages lack a voice because they are seen as burdens rather than assets.

Many of these women work on farms as their primary source of income, but they are paid very little for their labour. The stipends they receive are insufficient to feed them, forcing them to rely on aid distributed at the camp. Many remain idle at the camp during and after the farming season, with no trade to engage in, waiting for organizations and individuals to provide food and other basic needs.

This situation exposes them to various forms of exploitation, including sending their daughters to sleep with men for money or selling them off as house help. Teenage pregnancies are common in the camp. The Equal Access DB Project seeks to address and reduce these issues significantly. Many girls wanted to enrol in the program to help their mothers, grandmothers, and siblings instead of remaining idle in the camp. Thanks to this project, a few have already started learning life-impacting skills. Currently, countless women and girls aged 15-40 are idle, with many wanting to enrol, but we could only accommodate the first 300, aged 15-30.

Samuel Ioron Foundation believes that empowering women and girls is a powerful tool to change the world, creating earning opportunities and reducing sexual exploitation and over-dependence on humanitarian aid.

What is the EADB 300-Women Entrepreneurship Clustering Training all about?

The EADB 300-Women entrepreneurship clustering training answers the question of the easiest way to train a large number of stakeholders (i.e. women and girls) with a limited number of vendors in their access area or locality in a way that a positive impact can be made and within a short time frame. Thus, the idea of training by clusters was birthed where each cluster contains 30 women and girls between the ages 15-30 years old's assigned to a vendor and split into teams of ten stakeholders each with assigned days of training weekly. 

What entrepreneurial skills training are the women engaged in?

From the co-creation workshop held at the beginning of the project with a cross-section of stakeholders, the skills of major interest to most of the stakeholders were pin-pointed, thus, leading to our three-skills set comprising tailoring, baking, and hairdressing.