It is my distinct pleasure to welcome you all to our first virtual WISCAR Leadership and Mentoring Conference. Let me begin by thanking you for choosing to spend your Saturday afternoon with us. We are honoured that you have elected to join us today and hope that the program we have prepared for you will greatly surpass your expectations. Let us together dare to dream of a glorious future. A future in which each and every one of us will be champions of equality; a future in which all forms of discrimination and violence against women will have been erased from our society; A future in which each and every citizen can aim for the stars without regard to gender, economic position, age, race or ethnicity. For that is why we are here today, we are here to dream in order to achieve.
In the words of Gautama Buddha, “What you think, you become! What you feel, you attract! What you imagine you create.”
Let me start this afternoon by telling you a little bit about WISCAR. My apologies to those who have been part of WISCAR for a long time and have continued to walk our walk and talk our talk if I appear to be merely telling you about yourselves. But we must continue to expand our circles and to bring in fresh people and ideas, as that is the only way we can grow.
WISCAR is a non-profit organization focused on empowering and developing women to build a better nation. WISCAR’s flagship is the WIN with WISCAR Mentoring Programme. Its key features include;
- Inductive mentor, mentee pairing.
- Career seminars aimed at personal, inter-personal and organizational effectiveness.
- Book reviews.
- Role Modelling and networking through Meet-A-WISCAR sessions and an Annual Conference.
Additionally,
- Several programmes, in partnership with Habiba Balogun Consulting, which are open to the public; and
- Masterclasses to help navigate engagements in a virtual world.
The classes are segmented into 3:
- WIN 1 – aimed at talented beginners with under 5years experience.
- WIN 2 – is for women with 5-10 years’ experience.
- WIN 3 – addresses women aspiring to transition from middle management to general management and C-suite.
We kicked off 2020 with great excitement and every expectation to build on previous years and then COVID-19 reared its ugly head. I am pleased to report that we managed to seamlessly transition the WISCAR programmes into the virtual world. And, I believe, in the words of Robert Frost, “that has made all the difference!” The facilitators rose to the occasion, facilitated with aplomb, and communicated thoughts and ideas to the mentees with full impact, in spite of all the constraints.
Our 11th stream of mentees graduates today from the 12 months WIN I & II programme. It gladdens my heart to see their growth and their zeal to break glass ceilings in their various fields.
To the Mentees; I congratulate you on your graduation and I am confident that you will utilize the values and skills you have acquired from your program with WISCAR to drive for change in your organisation and in your communities. We look forward to hearing of your progress and accomplishments in all spheres. You have truly been a stellar example for the incoming stream of mentees whom I believe will also do great things.
I am delighted to inform you that, this year we deployed the final layer of the WIN model and successfully launched our WIN 3 program with 13 brilliant young women. We could not have asked for better pioneers as a group. This cohort from varied sectors, have been equipped and enabled by our structured mentoring programme that consists of three carefully designed masterclasses that build on critical leadership competencies and skills required to develop leaders. The structure of the programme also equipped these young women with not just peer to peer mentoring but one-on-one mentoring with 3 top level executives each.
This year WISCAR, as implementation partners, collaborated with UN Women Nigeria to deliver the Beijing +25 Intergenerational Mentoring programme. This project provided world class mentoring to a group of 25 exceptional young women in commemoration of 25 years post the “Fourth World Conference on Women”. It has been an honour and privilege for us to work with UN women on this strategic and transformational program.
In moving forward, we must look back. Our theme for last year’s conference was ‘I do not walk alone’, and in preparation for it we had a WISCAR mentoring walk. That walk signified many things, but perhaps most importantly, it projected the sense of community, togetherness and solidarity. Those are the hallmarks of WISCAR. We have continued this year with virtual walks in which our individual steps aggregate to over one million steps. These steps signify our joint and singular determination to walk into the future in order to achieve this year’s theme, “The future we want”.
What is the future we want? And who are the “we”? Are the “we” only women or are men included? Let us start with that. It is important for progress of humanity for all groups to identify with each other and with a central theme. That theme, I would suggest should be one for all and all for one. It is important that we recognize that a battle that is fought between groups is a battle fought against all. If men fight women, men will fail and women who fight men will equally fail. My call, today, is for unity of purpose to achieve that which is best for humanity, that all groups pull together to further transform our species. In the context of Nigeria, we must leverage all our energies, male and female, to transform our nation.
So, what is the future we want? It is a future of equal opportunity, equal access and equal rights. It is a future in which respect is accorded according to the quality of your contributions rather than the force of your arms. It is one in which respect is accorded for your excellence of character and not for your ability to dissimulate.
We have with us today an excellent array of speakers who will help us to achieve better understanding, not only of our dreams but of the challenges we will face in actualizing them. We also have a distinguished key-note speaker of peerless appeal in the person of Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, CFR. Stay with us and you will get to meet and engage with all these phenomenal people.
We thank ALL our Donors and Sponsors for their generous financial and in-kind support in a very difficult year; without your support we wouldn’t be here. I thank our WISCAR Patrons and Advisory Board for their leadership and guidance. I thank the conference planning committee, Chaired by Folake Ani-Mumuney and the WISCAR Staff and Secretariat led by Fabia Ogunmekan who have worked tirelessly to put this conference together.
I thank all of you in advance for your generous donations, some of which will go towards our fund for victims of gender-based violence supporting them to seek the legal assistance that they require. This fund is a direct result of the findings of our COVID-19 Impact report published in July of this year. Further details of the report and our 12-year impact report may be found on the WISCAR website.
Thank you and God Bless.
Amina Oyagbola
Founder/Chairperson
Women in Successful Careers (WISCAR)
November 28, 2020.
