Focus Area: Social Welfare, Education and Enterprise
Overview: Over the past 6 years, the Bank has partnered with the Fashion Souk initiative, convened by Eventful which has successfully empowered the Nigerian Fashion Industry to engage both nationally and internationally with delegates from across the globe. The initiative creates a platform for indigenous Nigerian fashion entrepreneurs across the value chain (from manufacturers to designers and retailers in clothing, textiles, leather and skin products, jewelry, accessories etc.) to showcase their talents, products and services to key stakeholders locally and internationally (including: buyers, retailers, investors, collaborators etc.).
The two-day fashion fair was designed to promote indigenous brands of fashion manufacturers and retailers to a global audience – creating opportunities for networking, fundraising, investments and collaboration for impact between creators and consumers.
The initiative also organized the ‘Business Pitch’ exercise – a workshop aimed at providing mentorship to and empowering younger fashion entrepreneurs with the knowledge, tools and resources required to scale up their productivity and profitability. The ‘Business Pitch’ exercise included pitch presentations from rising fashion entrepreneurs in need of funding to scale-up their business outputs. The exercise concluded with the presentation of business grants to the best performing entrepreneurs. Through this initiative, the Bank was able to achieve the following:
- Over 50 local Nigerian fashion entrepreneurs across the value chain showcase their products, talent and services to over 100,000 local and international stakeholders of the industry.
- Over N2million (Two Million Naira Only) in business grants provided to 3 local rising fashion entrepreneurs
- Over 15 young local fashion entrepreneurs accessed mentorship receiving education and empowerment on the knowledge, tools and resources for increased business productivity.
