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UMUAHIA – A group of women under the aegis of Item Women Empowerment Initiative (IWEI) is empowering and developing the skills of youths and women in Abia State, even as it promised to get more vulnerable and adolescent youths off the streets of Item in Bende Local Government Area and Abia State in general.

To this end, the women in Umuahia at the weekend organized a training programme on cream, soap, and cosmetics making, as well as food processing for youths and women in select communities across Abia State. The training featured lectures on how to develop business skills in a developing economy like Nigeria.

The participants were drilled on techniques of making bar-soaps, household creams, cosmetics, food processing and preservations etc as resource persons, experts and stakeholders in the industry took their turns to lecture the over 500 participants on critical areas of producing the products in addition to teaching them (the women and the youth) how to become self sufficient and also employers of labour.

Speaking with Daily Independent in Umuahia during the training, the founder of the group and initiator of the training programme, Barr (Mrs) Nnanna Adaeze Herbert Orji, stated that the activities of the NGO started 10 years ago at Item, Bende LGA of Abia State, South East, Nigeria, stressing that it was established to give succor to women and youths “because I saw a lot of school dropouts; many of the girls were getting pregnant, not continuing with what they’re doing and I knew that a disaster was ahead”.

Mrs Nnanna Herbert Orji, a retired Executive Chairman/Chief Justice of the Investment and Securities Tribunal of Nigeria, and wife of late Dr Herbert Orji, the late financial guru, said she was motivated by the plight of the indigent and vulnerable people in her Item homeland and decided to offer her assistance to them in order to stop a drift towards social doom for the entire community in future. 

“I immediately recruited some reverend fathers and I made one of them a member of the Board of Trustees. So, we started paying school fees for the indigent children, so instead of dropping out of school or out of trade or getting pregnant, they went back to school, both boys and the girls.

“From there, we started the one for women; we do empowerment for women. We trained a lot of women and girls on head dressing career and other skills and empowered them at that time, and then we got into other things. But since I have more time now (after retirement), I decided to try and see if I can get more sponsors and funding so that we can empower more people in a way that will make them come out of poverty or at least have something meaningful they can be doing”.

On why she went into philanthropy, Mrs Herbert Orji declared, “I’m a philanthropist by birth. My husband used to say I’m a bleeding heart because anything I have is for everybody around me, not just for me. My mother also has been a philanthropist. She trained a lot of people; brought up a lot of people and gave them education from primary school to higher school in the 1940s. So, I feel happy that even when I’m in Item, I see people about three or four men who come up to tell me how my mother made them go to school.

She disclosed that the IWEI has so far trained and empowered over 1,500 women and youths including men in Abia State, disclosing that the NGO will soon venture into other areas like providing the trainees the opportunity of standing on their own after every training with loans

“I decided to try and see if I can get more sponsors and funding to make more people come out of poverty and at least have something meaningful they can be doing. So that families would be able to take care of their children and themselves. The essence of the present programme which is targeting over 500 people is to lift people out of poverty, to train them on soap, cream and cosmetics making as well as food processing and sale as well as employers of labour. 

“And we’re targeting the young girls and youth in that age who are passionate. You can see our girls are designed in fashion, hairdressing, make-up. They’re doing very fantastical work in that area. 

“They’re skilled, they’re quite selling them. Instead of buying a plantain flour or corn meal in the supermarket, you can make yours. People are learning how to process them. You have the natural ingredients and in this workshop, you’re taught how to process them with the raw materials. That would bring more income to the family, instead of going to buy some; they can make nice tablets, nice creams, body butter, all the types, and then market.

The IWEI leader used the opportunity to thank the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) for its wonderful support to the organization and described the bank as a reliable partner in assisting the vulnerable to come out of wants, disease and poverty. She therefore called on philanthropists across Nigeria to take it as a point of duty to extend a hand of fellowship to the poor and vulnerable in the society.

According to her, a medical outreach was being carried out at Amaokwe Item by the NGO to counsel, treat and offer free eye glasses to eye patients, saying that the outreach was being organized by Reverend Father Agabus Ike, a Board of Trustees member of the Item Women Empowerment Initiative. “Some of our family members are also supporting us. My appeal to the wealthy in our society: this: ‘come to Mesopotamia and help us’”, she declared.