Ifeoma’s story

“It takes a village to raise a child” is a proverb that originated from the Nigerian Igbo culture where I come from – “Oran a azu nwa” – which means that it takes an entire community of people to raise a successful child. This proverb holds true for me and describes the significant role Cherie Blair Foundation has played in my life.

Omaness Skinfood is an impact-driven and indigenous beauty company in Nigeria with a mission to create body care products using naturally-active homegrown ingredients that nourishes the skin and enriches the lives of women. It is the first skinfood company in West Africa operating a one-of-a-kind women-powered business model which deliberately engages and enriches women from supply through impact sourcing down to the last mile of distribution by recruiting women to run their own business as independent resellers of our products. I was inspired to start this company two years ago because I believed I could harness our local resources to create a sustainable solution that would help increase the income and enrich the lives of low-income women in Nigeria.

I was first heard about Cherie Blair Foundation Mentoring Programme through a friend in 2018. At the time, I had just founded Omaness Skinfood. My background was in the non-profit sector and I had built up expertise working with low-income women and children for ten years. I felt a desire to venture out, because I realised that the model of charity intervention and offering handouts was not enough to help the women I worked with lift themselves out of poverty.

I saw an opportunity to start packaging and marketing the produce (shea butter, coconut oil, palm kernel oil) of some low-income artisan women and this helped increase the income for the women and their families. However, it was difficult scaling the business because we didn’t have a distribution system in place to reach more customers.

When I got accepted to become a Cherie Blair Foundation Mentee in 2019, I had just come up with a unique distribution model that would recruit women to start their own businesses and distribute our products across the country. I saw this as an opportunity to work on improving the distribution model and increasing awareness for my company.