Fifehan Osinkalu describes herself as a very spirited particular person, who is additionally dedicated and loyal to the issues that she believes in. She likes to steadiness her exhausting work with play and this displays within the work paths she naturally gravitates in the direction of.
Osinkalu is the founding father of Eden Venture Group, a social enterprise targeted on growing, supporting and empowering underserved and underrepresented demographies in rising economies. The Amazon alum spent over ten years serving to startups safe funding within the personal fairness house earlier than she pivoted to social impression, the place her coronary heart had all the time been.
Osinkalu’s work at Eden is partly targeted on leveraging on-line communities and networks to facilitate initiatives round social impression. The Eden staff organises bodily and digital occasions with themes that minimize throughout women’s empowerment and the expansion of the artistic trade.
I caught up with Fifehan for Centre Stage, and we mentioned her passions, present initiatives and her imaginative and prescient for the longer term.
Impact and revenue shouldn’t have to be mutually unique.
Fifehan Osinkalu: Eden Venture Group was based out of the need to create a house for social entrepreneurs and individuals keen about social impression. An area the place they’ll really feel safe, and entry the sources, capability improvement, and advisory companies that they want. From my expertise working within the enterprise capital and personal fairness house, I discovered that a lot of individuals, particularly creatives, had been disregarded and not likely taken severely. There’s the fallacious notion that their work received’t herald revenue and I simply wished to problem that. I used to be focused on impression, and I believe that each don’t need to be mutually unique. We could make a revenue from impact-driven initiatives, and this is what I got down to do.
On #WEECREATE
FO: #WEECREATE Africa got here from my very own private observations of the market. In my earlier position working in personal fairness and the VC house, I realised that most individuals, particularly within the finance house, didn’t actually perceive the language of creatives, and even the language of women. Men are dominant in these workspaces, and there was simply no communication. After I left the personal fairness house, I discovered myself working within the artistic and leisure trade and I realised that the identical factor was taking place. This simply made me realise that we needed to deal with it. I imagine that we have to give women and creatives the instruments to thrive.
I labored on a undertaking targeted on gender equality with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and due to that, I used to be capable of get myself embedded within the advocacy for women’s house. What we’ve been doing with that undertaking is basically working with influencers and celebrities with giant platforms in addition to NGOs to shift the mindset round important points pertaining to gender equality in Nigeria and Kenya. Before that, I had carried out some work with women and creatives, and it occurred to me that it was a good time to convey again my thought. So I went again to the drafting board and reworked the thought to incorporate a lot of context round what’s happening in immediately’s world.
On the position of the digital house in empowering women
FO: Helping women entry digital instruments is one of the crucial vital issues we have to give attention to. The web is a invaluable supply of community and data which we are able to leverage so as to get extra women empowered. Technology can open up pathways to empowerment for women and it’s vital that we take note of that. At Eden Venture Group, we use the web to foster community, which is a vital function of empowerment. Being capable of finding your tribe on-line is empowerment. Being capable of entry the web is empowering. Being capable of present up on the web as authentically as potential is empowering. We want to assist women keep safe on-line —the knowledge is there, however our work is to make it simpler and extra accessible to women. Women’s voices should be heard on the web and we should be included in numerous on-line areas.
This is particularly vital now that now we have AI, which makes use of knowledge discovered on the web. It must learn the way women suppose, what their concepts are, and what their realities are – so as for its options to be as inclusive as potential. Women are going to be interacting with these instruments and we have to be sure that the instruments are usually not biased. It’s vital to me that women and women are digitally savvy and can work together with digital instruments as we proceed this digital revolution.
On Community because the bedrock of each wholesome society
FO: There are elementary issues that I’ve discovered in the midst of this journey. The very first thing is that community is on the basis of a wholesome society and that there are lots of younger individuals, women specifically, who’re in search of inclusive hybrid (digital & in-person) communities the place they really feel safe sufficient to be themselves, categorical themselves freely and innovate creatively with out worry of bias, judgement or abuse.
Community has been a monumental a part of my journey. One of the the reason why I’m so keen about our work with women and creatives is as a result of I actually have been by all these points that I’m preventing for proper now. After shifting to Nigeria, I sought out communities that felt inclusive to women that I might be a a part of however I couldn’t discover any. It felt like a recreation of taking part in catch-up with the blokes, and that simply didn’t attraction to me. As a lady within the tech trade, particularly one who had a artistic facet, I felt excluded from a lot of areas and additionally confronted a lot of destructive experiences over time, however there have been no safe areas for me. This fueled my dedication to creating communities for younger women and women, particularly those that are creatives.
Another factor I’ve discovered is that many individuals are in search of alternatives to work together and dialogue so as to alternate information and concepts with like minds. It appears very clear that there is a starvation for receiving and sharing data in a non-traditional setting, and we’ve plugged into that.
Collaboration is Key
FO: We collaborate with improvement organizations (NGOs, CSOs, authorities companies and many others.) which has been essential to our work. We give them a likelihood to showcase their work and achieve suggestions and publicity in a extra natural and genuine manner than in different conventional boards.
So far, we’ve partnered with notable organisations like The Africa International Film Festival(AFRIFF), Africa Creative Market, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Design Week Lagos/Made by Design and the Musa Yar’Adua Foundation to call a few. There are much more collaborations to come back.
The plan for the following 5 years
FO: In the following 5 years, we plan for #WEECREATE to have the identical impression as world manufacturers like Global Citizen. We’re the primary African-female-led world marketing campaign working to facilitate women’s financial empowerment in addition to the artistic sector, and we’re trying to do much more work on this regard. We strongly imagine that the artistic sector could be a catalyst for reshaping our minds from the dangerous stereotypes round gender in Africa.
…. to be continued
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