Nestle takes empowerment scheme to South-South
By Oghale Mafuru
As part of its Corporate Social Responsibility initiative, Nestle Nigeria, a leading Fast Moving Consumer Goods, FMCG, Company has announced plans to extend its empowerment scheme for female retailers to the South-South geopolitical zone of the country to meet the target of 300 beneficiaries earmarked for the program.
Speaking on MARKETING EDGE on TV, Victoria Uwadoka, Head, Corporate Communication, Nestle Nigeria who made this disclosure, affirmed the company’s plan to cover the entire six geopolitical zones of the country as it is committed to enhancing the quality of life of Nigerians through series of interventions aimed to improve their standard of living.
According to her, the empowerment scheme tagged: “Nestlé Empowering Rural Women in Nigeria” is focused on assisting female retailers in the supply chain with the required knowledge, expertise, and support to scale -up their businesses and earn good income to support their families.
“Nestle empowering rural women in Nigeria project is something that we developed within our company to ensure that we make a contribution in a very significant way to women who are already a part of our value chain. So, for us we looked at these women who are at the bottom of the pyramid and sometimes the challenges with expanding their businesses. So, we decided that what we wanted to do was to empower them not just with a grant or with products but also train them so they will be able to leverage the opportunity of the training the scheme will provide to grow their businesses”.
Commenting on the kind of training the women are exposed to, she said: “They get training on marketing including merchandising, customer relationship management, they also get training on bookkeeping which is very critical we find out that are always been taken for granted that people know, we find out that is a key challenge so we train them on bookkeeping as well. We also train them on basic business management principles”.
While noting that the scheme had recorded measurable successes in other parts of the country, she expressed commitment to its vision of enhancing the quality of life of people.
“You can trust us; we are a force for good. Everything we do is about good, providing good food for good life, being good for the planet, and to make sure we are doing what is good for individuals and family and communities and what is good for the environment” she said.
The “Nestlé Empowering Rural Women in Nigeria project” which was flagged off in the North-Central geopolitical zone is one of the Company’s Creating Shared Value (CSV) initiatives to contribute toward building thriving communities by improving livelihoods.
The project has so far empowered over 150 women drawn from three geopolitical zones of the country.
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