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In a bid to change the under-utilisation of women and youth entrepreneurship especially in the media space, the Founder, Ascend Studios Foundation and Africa Children’s Creative Network, Inya Lawal, has said the foundation has set its target of empowering 2000 women before the end of the year.
Lawal, who disclosed this during a virtual briefing with newsmen in Lagos at the weekend, said the foundation was established to create a ripple effect in women and youth entrepreneurship while adding that about 2.7 billion women are restricted to doing some investments in the economy.
She said women remain under utilized, stressing that there was a huge gap when it came to utilization of men in the economy.
“When women are empowered, their productivity increases and this can create a ripple effect in the economy as there is basically an expansion in our economy because they will definitely spread this down to others especially the youths. So far since the inception of this foundation in 2019, 1500 women as well as 500 kids have benefitted from the foundation no thanks to different brands and organizations who have donated about $250,000 in which some of the money were grants and more went into running empowerment programs.
The goal of ASF is sustainability and prosperity and so we intend to take this number to 2000 before the end of the year and push for about 5000 women by 2022”, Lawal said.
According to her, the foundation is working on more initiatives to empower women in the media and is looking at having a summit in 2022.
She said that the foundation is also looking at empowering returned migrants and called on stakeholders to partner with them to ensure its planned programmes by 2022 kick off.
“I believe we are here to stay in the long term and that is because I believe that we have a proper structure and sustainability plan. For every plan, we always have a midline assessment of how well the women have improved with the funds available to them and with companies, brands seeing this, more will want to continue to invest in these women and youths”, the ASF founder said.
Aside from the foundation, Lawal also heads the Ascend Studios which produces TV and feature content, and its subsidiaries Ascend Talent Management and Ascend Consulting manages the careers of some of the finest talents from Africa and its diaspora and consults for companies and brands.
