The month of April (April 14th specifically) is the birth month of our Founder and Executive Director. She decided that as a way to celebrate her birthday she will be giving weekly token prizes to the 14 women who participated in our just concluded Tech training workshop that took place last month.
The overarching purpose of the initiative was not so much the prizes that will be won as it was the idea behind it. And the idea behind it was to monitor the progress of our participants to ensure that they are continually applying the lessons they learnt during the tech training workshop.
Every week this month they were given a practical tech task to perform, in line with the lessons taught at the Workshop. 2 token prizes was to be given out each week to the lucky winners. In our Founder’s own words, “there is no better way to thank God for another gift of life and celebrate my birthday than to do so by impactful meaningful giving.”
The first week saw one winner, in the person of Elizabeth Ekedoro of EE Luxury Apparel.
For the week’s task, the participants were required to do the following:
1. Illustrate on a Google spreadsheet the following information about their business for the first quarter of this year 2023 – Their income; Their expenditure; Their profit; The demography of their client base; The type of goods they sell and quantities; Their projected profit versus your actual profit; Their projected profit for the year and then broken down into quarterly segments for the year.
For those who didn’t have businesses, they were free to make up a phantom business and still do the same breakdown. The main purpose of the spreadsheet was to help them see the main highlights of their business at a glance and keep a pulse on the health of their businesses.
2. A short 30 second to 1 minute video introducing their business to an audience they are meeting for the first time.
The token prize for this week was a cash prize of N5,000. Find out more on Elizabeth’s submission on our Instagram page here.
The token prize for this week was a cash prize of N3,000. Find out more about Eunice and her submission on our Instagram Page here.
The second week’s winner was Iwendi Chinwe Eunice of Unique Fascinators.
The task for the week was a rather unconventional one meant to upskill the digital skills the ladies learnt during our workshop. We discovered an amazing course by Google Digital Garage called Fundamentals of Digital Marketing (you can find out more about it here.
Given how important digital marketing skills are in this digital age, we thought it a good opportunity to encourage our participants to take advantage of the course. The participants were given a period of 6 days to complete the course which would take about 40 hours to complete. After completion of the course and obtaining their certificate, the participant would share a copy of their certificate and win the token prize. The token prize is really to encourage their determination and drive to want to upskill themselves with digital marketing skills to finish the course.
The third week saw two winners, Eunice (from the previous week) and Akpotue Maryann of Fashion_with_Ann.
For that week, the participants were expected to do the following:
1. Make a YouTube video (or it can be broken down into two videos) introducing themselves and what their YouTube channel is about and as well as a first short YouTube video content.
2. Design a flier advertising their services and what they offer.
Both Maryann and Eunice carried out the tasks and won themselves token participation prizes of ₦2,000 and ₦2,500 respectively.
The last week which was the icing on the cake required the participants to carry out the following tasks:
1. Create a simple website of your business or anything else you want to create a website off, on Google sites. In case you’ve forgotten LeAnn’s lesson this during the training, you can revisit the recording or check out this helpful guide from Google here.
2. Take the following 4 short courses on Coursera. Each course takes 2 hours or less to complete.
https://www.coursera.org/projects/create-a-budget-with-google-sheets
https://www.coursera.org/projects/use-canva-to-create-social-media-visuals-for-business
https://www.coursera.org/projects/create-design-digital-products-canva
https://www.coursera.org/projects/create-a-promotional-video-using-canva
3. A write-up about yourself. Let’s call it your profile. In your profile sell yourself to a famous person that you will meet in an important business meeting that you will attend. There is no requirement on format. The most ingenious presentation though will obviously stand above the rest. Think of meeting Dangote or even the President. How will you present yourself.
4. Finally prepare your personal budget for the next 3 months starting from May, on Google Sheets.
There was however no winner for the last week. It appears our participants decided this last week’s task was too arduous for them and thus there were no participants and no prizes. The missed token prizes would have been a cash token prize of N10,000 each. Find out more on our Instagram Page here.
And thus marked the end of our Founder’s Birthday Giveaway for this month. We thank our participants for making the initiative a fun one over the past couple of weeks and wish them well as they continue to apply the knowledge gained to their respective businesses.
Glory Ifezue Foundation for Women and Youth Initiative. 