Changing mindsets of women is our mission – Etuk

Inimfon Etuk is the coordinator of the Friend Raiser Community. Friend Raiser is a platform established to discuss women development issues in order to improve their well-being. In this interview, she says that the community aims to make women look inward, better society and their families.   Tell us what the Friend Raiser Community is about? […]

Inimfon Etuk is the coordinator of the Friend Raiser Community. Friend Raiser is a platform established to discuss women development issues in order to improve their well-being. In this interview, she says that the community aims to make women look inward, better society and their families.  

Tell us what the Friend Raiser Community is about?
The Friend Raiser Community started with a need to expand limited options, in terms of networking, getting to feel the pulse of the city, knowing what the next person is doing and, generally, find a platform where you could draw inspiration to grow your work. Three years ago, in March 2013, we convened the first Friend Raiser Community session. It actually was inspired by the International Day for Women, observed by the United Nations every year. We thought it would be good if we could have an activity to bring the women in Abuja together, to know ourselves, exchange ideas and express ourselves. We had one of the most fulfilling sessions I had ever been a part of, and everyone kept asking: what next? We thought we can always find reason to come together. After that first edition, we were able to start monthly sessions called Friend Raiser Friday, and it has grown interestingly over time. By the second year, it had pretty much grown bigger than us, that we had to convene an annual event which we called She Forum Africa. We didn’t want to say She Forum Nigeria, we thought, let’s give it a pan-African feel, because we were driven by what we were doing. We were not coming together to compare makeup, hairdo, bags or shoes. We were coming together to share experiences on personal development, how we could grow our businesses and find best practices we could tap into and learn from and apply to whatever we were doing, how we could also be contributing citizens in our environment, in terms of governance, democracy, leadership. A lot of people could relate with some of the issues we were putting on the table for people to talk about and learn. That’s what’s helped us grow over the three years we have been in existence. The vision is growing. We have been able to convene a number of activities, tapping into social media space.
We have convened a couple of tweet sessions, spanning various subject matters. We have also streamlined our activities into some processes-personal development and entrepreneurship series, health and lifestyles series, and democracy, leadership and governance series. All of these allow us tap into whatever issues are dominant in those broad areas and people are able to be more focused about what kinds of learning they draw from there. It’s been a smooth sail but challenging in a way because the more you expand, the more you attract interest from women and feel the need to do more.   
How large is your membership?   
So far it has not been membership driven. We kept it that way because we didn’t want people to feel compelled to do things they were not willingly committed to undertake. I think that has  also been a success factor in retaining the kind of interest we have. We have people ask if they can come along with someone, a friend, a sister and the interest keeps broadening. It is in 2016 that we are going to introduce a membership structure, because we have also been able to reorganise internally and get ourselves a better structure to deliver more value for women.   
How do you coordinate your activities?
There have been voluntary contributions by people. In those earlier sessions, when we ended them people didn’t want to go. The feel-good factor has been so strong. Individuals said I will be responsible for this, and they accomplished that task. Over time, in terms of the more elaborate things we have done, we have been able to get partners who support us and take up the logistics cost. Vlisco has been wonderful for the past three years, there is pretty much nothing we have done that Vlisco hasn’t assisted us.
What have you done to impact lives of women?
We provide soft side of training you don’t get in formal structures. Abuja is such a place where many women are introverts. But, to a large extent, these are women who are just confined to little spaces. Also, because this is up North and if you understand the configuration of cultural biases in Nigeria, you can understand that freedom of expression, especially on the part of the female, is pretty much limited. To have this space where people come and say, I want to be able to pursue this career but my husband thinks differently, or I want to do ABC but I don’t think I can, it’s good. Sometimes, it is not about the money, people need a little push in the right direction and connecting someone with a vision helper, an inspiring mentor, that allows them to express themselves in a manner that gives them fulfillment and, equally, affects income they make. To a large extent, that’s what makes us different from the next person. It is not about going to make donations or empower people, but we are able to affect the minds positively at the end of the day. We have had people who have registered and gone to school from attending sessions here and they come back to say God bless you for the work you are doing, because from the last session I was able to do this or that. In our health and lifestyle sessions, people have gone to do voluntary tests and somebody can talk to you one-on-one about the dangers of certain lifestyles, food and sleeping habits, all kinds of things you typically take for granted. We have had activities where people donate blood freely just by being associated with some of the activities we have hosted. It is a kind of environment that presses on the mind to get you to do things voluntarily. In other words, live the good life without feeling compelled to do so. It turns people into better human beings able to take better decisions for themselves and live better lives.