MTN Foundation on Thursday 8, December officially concluded the four-week virtual training for the top 500 female participants of the Y’ellopreneur initiative. The capacity building training was designed to equip the women with all-round skills to help scale their businesses.
The training covered several topics including, customer service, leadership essentials, marketing management, financial management, operations management and business plan development. The women also had the opportunity to learn from professionals and MTN managers about enterprise business, customer service, tax and using MoMo PSB for ease of business.
Speaking at the final session with the women, Odunayo Sanya, Executive Secretary, MTN Foundation encouraged the women to take advantage of the training, as it will greatly impact their business. “I especially want to congratulate everyone here, for making it this far, and officially being the first set of MTN Y’ellopreneurs. I want to encourage everyone to take everything you have learned seriously and look for how you can leverage all that you have learned to improve your businesses,” she said.
Also speaking at the session, excited participant, Nafisat Abdullahi, highlighted how the training has been an eye opener and how she plans to scale her business using all that she has learnt. “The training was indeed eye-opening and I am glad I was selected out of the thousands of applicants. I have learnt good business practices and I have started implementing some of the things we were taught on my business. I also want to say a big thank you to the MTN Foundation for this opportunity, it has indeed helped us,” she said.
Following the training, the women have the opportunity to pitch their businesses for a chance to get an equipment loan of N2m, and the outstanding 150 entrepreneurs with bankable businesses will all be supported with the loan at a fixed interest rate of 2.5% and 36 months repayment duration.
The Y’ellopreneur initiative, which is part of MTN Foundation’s strategic effort to participate in the reduction of female unemployment in Nigeria, is set to help transform budding small businesses for Nigerian women.