Sylvia Tweneboah-Koduah, CEO of Women in entrepreneurship Awards
CEO of Women In Entrepreneurship Awards, Sylvia Tweneboah-Koduah, has disclosed what encouraged her to bring to life the Women In Entrepreneurship Ghana (WIEG) initiative.
Talking about what point in her life she decided to start this vision, she mentioned that “at a point in her life things were very difficult for her and she realized she accepted anything that came her way, because she didn’t have a choice nor the means to make decisions for herself.
I was living my life based on what people said and even the food I ate was dictated by someone. I decided to start a business and that was when I realized that it wasn’t easy.”
She revealed that she went through so much that at a point, she decided to ask for help from a male friend who asked her to meet him somewhere in Tema.
“Unfortunately for me, I asked him what for and he said you need money right? I said yes so meet me, you’re a big girl meaning he expected me to understand what he was asking for and after hearing that, it made me lock myself and stay indoors continuously for three days. I realized that the world was tough,” she told Eunice Tornyi on e.TV Ghana’s African Women’s Voices.
According to her, he wasn’t the first person to do that, and this made her realize a lot of women are being sexually abused because they don’t have money.
She furthered that after a while, “she asked herself if she was the only person in that kind of situation, and she came to the realization that some others might also be going through same or worse. So, for her to be very sure she needed to reach out to other women.
So I gathered a few friends and we started WIEG and within three days we had a membership of about 150 women. We used to meet on a WhatsApp group so within 2 weeks, we had our second group and we all started talking about what we were going through and it was sad. When I met these women, about 90% of them couldn’t even afford a flier for their businesses so we had to come together and get someone to help them make their fliers or sometimes do them myself.”
Sylvia revealed that with time, other women joined and “they hadn’t even started any business at all but they liked the idea. While some others joined and their problem was they wanted to start the business but their husbands won’t let them.”
She revealed that currently, they’re about 3000 women nationwide as they have been able to cross Ghana and gradually take it to other parts of Africa.
“We started from Ghana, Nigeria, Benin Burkina Faso, Togo and Cameron. We’re scattered all over and we’re still growing and we’re still receiving women who are interested in joining us,” she emphasized.