During today's weekly online UK-Nigeria meeting we learned that Comfort was absent as she was being interviewed for the TV!
John went on to explain that the local TV station of the Nigerian Television Authority wanted to interview her as she is a role model for entrepreneurship.
It was agreed by the team that Frances would also 'interview' Comfort on her return and send us some details. Below is Frances' report.
"Comfort returned today exhilarated from her TV interview about the challenges of being responsible for a family as well as following a career. The interview was supposed to take 30 minutes but actually took 45. Comfort was worried that she talked too much but I know that she is driven by her passion for so many things.
Comfort talked about her 'first' career as a teacher as well as her current career as Director of Operations at Fantsuam Foundation. She talked about the importance of family support both with a partner and the extended family in order to fulfill so many different roles.
However Comfort has a different perspective than others on who is a career woman. Through her work in microfinance in Fantsuam Foundation Comfort is aware of the many rural woman who are combining the care of their family and trying to develop a business. Comfort says that these women are career women too. Although it is true that formal education can enhance opportunities, other less formally educated women also have careers. They are educated too, but in different ways with different skills. Comfort was aware that this was a novel point of view for her interviewer.
The interview went on to explore what services the microfinance programme at Fantsuam provides. Although the interviewer was aware of the provision of loans. She was not aware that for about a year Fantsuam has been providing a savings scheme called 'Adashe' - the Hausa word for savings. Some women do not want to take a loan but do want a secure and convenient place to lodge their savings which they may need for a specific purpose or simply for a 'rainy day'. They can save regularly either daily, weekly or monthly and having established their commitment they can if they wish borrow money against their continued savings. For example, if they have saved 4,000 naira they could then take a loan for 10,000 naira ie they have saved 40% of the sum already. Such a loan could be provided the next day - much quicker than from any commercial bank. Once they learned about Adashe the interviewer and one of her colleagues immediately decided to subscribe to the scheme! "