Through its yearly business summit, the Thriving Business Women Fellowship, an arm of the Victorious Praying Women Ministry, has been bridging the gap in business management skills in enterprise development for aspiring women entrepreneurs for 10 years. This year’s edition, tagged “Opportunity”, will hold next month. Assistant Editor CHIKODI OKEREOCHA looks at how the summit, through experience sharing and networking, has been raising budding women entrepreneurs by teaching them how to start, run and grow their businesses.
When she came up with a programme tagged “Inspirational Tuesdays,” the founder of Victorious Praying Women Ministry (VPWM), Pastor Mayokun Oreofe, probably never thought that it would later transform into what is today, arguably, the most sought-after yearly business summit for start-ups and aspiring women entrepreneurs, including sit-at-home mothers, fresh graduates as well as people in paid employment.
Through the Inspirational Tuesdays, the Thriving Business Women Fellowship (TWBF), the business fellowship arm of VPWM, gathered successful business people to share their stories and experiences, talk about their challenges and how they were able to overcome them so that other women will learn from them. Ten years ago, it metamorphosed into the TWBF’s annual business summit, which holds all through the month of June.
This year’s edition of the summit, which is the 10th in the series, is themed “Opportunity” and is scheduled for June next month. The Team Lead for the “TWBF Business Summit 2018,” Dr. Bukola Adewakun, explained that the summit was an offshoot of TBWF’s Inspirational Tuesdays, which later blossomed into a proper and immensely impactful annual business summit, with Pastor Oreofe as the Convener.
Adewakun said this year’s edition will, as usual, bring together ardent and successful entrepreneurs from all works of life to come and share their ‘grass to grace’ exploits with other aspiring business women so as to motivate and encourage them. He assured that the summit, which will hold next month in four cities of Lagos, Abuja, Ibadan and Abeokuta, will be “fabulous and loaded” .
Adewakun, who is also the General Manager of Thriving Enterprise Development Center (TEDC), a business school that trains on how to start, run and grow a business to a world-class business, said the summit will take place every Tuesday in Lagos at Victory Place, No 15, Nurudeen Olowopopo Road, by Marwa Gardens Traffic Light, CBD Area, Alausa Ikeja.
Other summit venues are Ibadan, which holds every Thursday at Victory House, Old Bodija Estate; Abuja, every Thursday at Bible Guest House, Wuze Zone 5; Abeokuta, Amazing Grace Hall, Kuforuji Olubi Estate. She said admission to the summit is free.
Adewakun said as part of efforts to ensure that existing and prospective women entrepreneurs who will attend the summit get value for their participation, TWBF has lined up seven successful, top-notch speakers who will speak across the four summit centres.
They include culinary expert/CEO, Martha’s Kitchen, Adesola Ige; CEO, Multi Dreams International, Chinyere Anokwuru; Executive Director, Konz Consulting Limited, Gozie Udemezue; Convener of Smart Stewards Initiative, a platform for teaching sound principles on personal finance management especially for women, Sola Adesakin.
Others are CEO of Zaron Group of Companies, comprising Zaron International Limited, Zaron Cosmetics Limited and Zaron Hair International Limited, Ms Oke Maduewesi; CEO, JusteLunch Catering Services Ltd, a professional catering service company, Sharon Akinroye; Md/CEO, De-vine Plus Hotel & Suite, Jibike Ifidon.
Adewakun said: “The speakers’ stories will challenge people; they will motivate others to do something. And even the ones that are doing something will pick tips on how to better run their businesses and organisations.”
She explained that although TBWF does not provide participants with seed capital to start off their businesses, it partners with banks and other financial institutions to use the platform of the summit to explain what their organisations are about and how they can help with seed capital.
“We don’t have a pool of funds anywhere to give to people, but from the information they get from the summit, they are able to know where next to turn and we bring organisations that are into that,” Adewakun said, adding that the experience sharing harmers on many people who started small and grew big.
Impacts of the summit
The last 10 years of the business summit has been very impactful. Adewakun said, for instance, that based on testimonies by attendees, a large number of people, including women entrepreneurs, sit at home mothers, fresh graduates and people in paid employment started their business based on the prompting from speakers at the summits.
“Maybe they (attendees) heard something from what the resource persons spoke about, which gave them the push, the courage or the boldness to start off a business. And their businesses are now running and they are doing fine,” she told The Nation.
She also said that through the summit, many start-ups have benefited from networking opportunities. “People come from all works of life so, there is the opportunity to make new friends, have new business contacts, which you know has led to several other bigger businesses for people,” she said.
The large turnout of participants to the annual summit attests to its huge success over the years. For instance, from about 100 women participants when it started 10 years ago, attendance at last year’s summit was an average of 1, 000 women per Tuesday.
“Now, we attract over 1, 000 women in Lagos. In Abeokuta, where we started last year, we attracted about 400 women. Also, about 400-500 women participated in Ibadan. In Abuja we had about 100 people,” Adewakun said.
The scope of the summit has also expanded in the last 10 years. The summit, which used to be a two-day conference when it started, now holds four times in a month. “In Lagos, it is every Tuesday; Abeokuta, every Wednesday; Ibadan and Abuja, every Thursday of June,” the Team Leader said.
Though a business women fellowship, TWBF is however, not extreme gender biased. As Adewakun explained, “We’ve never been extreme gender biased. We don’t say it’s strictly for women and men should not come. At any of our programmes and summits, you will always find between five to 10 per cent men in our mist.”
She said each time the forum gathers 1, 000 participants, it has between 20 and 30 men show up. “They (men) also learn a lot from the summit. And then, also for our speakers, we don’t restrict it to women, men also come as part of our speakers, but we have a higher population of women,” she said
Although Pastor Oreofe is the President of the TEDC- an initiative that seeks to bridge the gap of business management skills in enterprise development, Adewakun, who oversees the centre as General Manager, said TEDC do not just train, but also follow up to ensure that trainees actually get the success that they are looking for.
According to her, the centre has a mentoring programme, which follows up every candidate that attends its programme.