TOCI empowers women through business workshop
By Omolola Adeyanju
The Tope Olagbegi’s Circle of Influence (TOCI) has held the maiden edition of her business workshop for women empowerment.
According to a member of the business unit team, TOCI, Adenike Adebola, the workshop is the first of its kind by the association. However, there have been other events that have evolved from the group. She explained that the workshop was birthed by a need to up-skill women of all ages, tribes and religions.
Adenike expressed that they are looking forward to businesses emanating from the participants being empowered, ‘for those who have a business already, they can up-skill.
‘The vision of TOCI is to raise godly women who will shine their lights in a dark world’, She said.
The workshop featured numerous women engulfed with the zeal to learn and improve in their various arts and crafts as well as ten professional facilitators. Some of the facilitators include; Temitope Newton for Event Planning Class; Chineme Robinson for Content Creation Class; Brenda Unu for business writing; Olanike Ogedengbe for spice class; Oghenetega Gbadagri for diffusals class and many others.
Speaking to the facilitators, facilitator for Event planning class, Temitope Newton enumerated that she has worked for over nine years as an event planner. To this regard, she could cite the major challenge faced by events planners basically as the fact that there are many untrained competitors in the event planning business.
She said, “Events planning firms have been for years functioning as a job provider for the masses. They are one of the biggest employers and recruiters of services such as ushers, caterers, designers, to name a few.”
Temitope taught participant project management and they learnt how to manage, coordinate, and organize events.
Facilitator for content creation class, Chineme Robinson reiterated the essence of TOCI as an empowerment fellowship for women that is targeted at making women the best version of themselves. Teaching content creation, she explained, ‘The major objective of this class is to get business owners, mostly women to make the best use of social media for promotion of their businesses.
Brenda Unu, an architect, writer, enterpreneur and a coach taught the participants business writing, the formal means of writing proposals, preparing good sales letters and a proper email.
According to her, it is imperative to learn the tenets of business writing. ‘Many people have great ideas but do not know the right ways to document them or the right format for a well written business writing.’
One of the leaders of the group, Mrs Onyinye Evans-Nwosu stated the concept behind TOCI. She said, ‘it is a group of women from diverse areas, tribes and professions binded by the love of Christ.’
In respect to the business workshop she said, “it will help provide other streams of income for women. Giving women the ability to make it on their own.”
She emphasized that the convener, Mrs Tope Olagbegi is a pastor whose decisions are mainly founded by the Holy Spirit and she believes TOCI is that platform to build and sustain godly women who will be strengths to the nation rather than liabilities.
Olanike Ogedengbe, a spice manufacturer and one of the facilitators noted that covid’19 revealed the importance of spice and its relevance to an healthy lifestyle. She expressed the hazards in wrong combinations and mixture of spices and hoped for more development on the industry.
