Lady Obioma Liyel Imoke
Diana Okon-Effiong, Calabar
The Founder/Board Chair, Partnership Opportunities for Women Empowerment Realization, POWER, Mrs. Obioma Liyel Imoke will be the keynote speaker at the Luncheon event of the Conference of the International Association of African NGOS holding Saturday, Sept. 7, 2013.
The conference is scheduled for September 5-7, 2013 at the Hilton Hotels and Resort, Rockville, MD. She will speak on “The role of NGOS in the economic development of Africa”.
A leading women’s rights advocate in Africa, Mrs. Liyel-Imoke would raise critical development and women empowerment issues in her presentation.
Her work has been recognized internationally. She was recently invited by United Nations Secretary General, Ba Ki Moon to participate in a United Nations conference on education and was also recently appointed Education Ambassador by Mrs. Gordon Brown, wife of the former British Prime Minister.
Her appointment as education Ambassador was based on her role in ensuring that Cross River State children have access to free and compulsory education, for taking vulnerable children into resettlement homes and ensuring that each and every child is given equal opportunity to go back to school and for establishing the only American International School outside Lagos and Abuja.
She is expected to share her personal experience of how, through the NGO she founded, Partnership Opportunities for Women Empowerment Realization (POWER) she is facilitating support for women in Cross River State and through this, contributing to the development of the economy of Cross River State.
Her NGO, POWER, is envisioned to put money in the hands of a woman. Its vision is to ensure that women meet all their basic needs. In achieving this, it has a mission which is encapsulated in being “the leading NGO in Africa working for the eradication of extreme poverty among women through evidence-driven vulnerability-reduction initiatives, enterprise development and capacity building.
POWER currently implements two projects: Project Awake and the GLOW Project.
“Project AWAKE” is an Agricultural Women Empowerment project co-designed by the Cross River State Microfinance and Enterprise Development Agency (‘MEDA’) and Partnership Opportunities for Women Empowerment Realization (‘POWER’).
The vision of “Project AWAKE” is to promote sustainable economic development in our communities through a gender specific intervention strategy. Both partners will work with a community of stakeholders, collaborators and associations to implement the Project.
No less than 400 women cooperatives of 10 members each in clusters of communities are expected to benefit from the Project and result in the creation of 4,000 women “Agripreneurs” in On and Off-farm clusters.
On the other hand, the GLOW Project aims at developing/enhancing the livelihoods of at least 1,980 poor widows in Cross River State through vocational skills acquisition, micro enterprise development and access to micro finance.
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