Agnes is educated to university level having graduated with an electrical engineering degree. She then spent five years looking for a suitable job and doing short term administrative work until she got married to a local teacher and had four children. When I met Agnes she was pregnant with her fifth child and living in a two bedroom home.

 

“Life is very difficult because the teachers don’t get paid on time and the children need school books and fees. I can’t find a job in my field and I don’t think I will now with four children. Who will look after them”

 

Agnes is very creative and has since taken up jewellery making to supplement her income. She also sells beans, salt and other condiments on a stall outside her house to make ends meet. She has attracted a number of paying customers for her jewellery but after the first sale, they don’t tend to buy anymore because her material is so poor.

“I would like to be able to learn new techniques like I see in the books, but I can’t afford the N2000 (£4.00) the periodicals cost”

 

When Agnes attended one of my presentations she was eager to access more information and guidance in terms of developing her techniques and sourcing supplies that were inexpensive.

 

A year on, Agnes has set up a group o six bead workers who aim to learn more beading techniques and then cascading their learning to young entrepreneurs. There are three women currently learning from her who want to use their skills to run a business and Agnes aims to grow this number to ten initially by attracting not only people disadvantaged by low income, but also young university undergraduates who may face unemployment after their course.

Agnes hopes to incorporate the group as a social enterprise school in 2009 when all the development and pilot process is over.

Neomari is working with Agnes and provides her group with handouts on technique and our surplus resources. We are also researching African bead sources and supporting aim to liaise with the Small Medium Enterprise Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN) to fund more training courses for up to 10 participants initially.

We have also set up a BeadCycle project, collecting unwanted bead surpluses to take  to the group to be used for their training. They will sell the products collaboratively.

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