Co-Founders of Blooming Dames safe house, Ibadan, a faith based empowerment centre for women in exploitative occupation have kicked off a first phase of 5-week skill acquisition training for seven commercial sex workers under the SHE-Leads Survivor Empowerment Training Project.

The scheme, supported by MeCAHT, an international organization in Denmark, will also offer advanced 7-week training for the beneficiaries in July, 2026.

The initiative, according to the executive director, Connecting Hearts of Women For Positive Change Initiative, Mrs. Abimbola Okutinyang and her partner, the Executive Director, Pan African Purpose-Driven Women Initiative, Mrs Oluwatoyin Ogedengbe, was to provide viable psycho-social and economic supports to beneficiaries and reintegrate survivors of human trafficking to the society.

Speaking with newsarena.ng at the opening ceremony of the capacity building, Mrs. Okutinyang hinted that the beneficiaries who will be trained in fashion designing, catering and hair dressing, based on their choices, would also go through value added courses such as financial management, integrity in business, administration and other human developmental skills that will help them to run their businesses effectively after the training.

She said “we have a very robust curriculum and we trust that by the end of the training, the ladies must have been equipped with some income generating skills”

“We expect that after the training they should be able to run their businesses; and the training does not only stop with skill acquisition, we would also have some value based training where they will be taught how to run their businesses, how to have integrity in business, so it’s an all round training and we intend to monitor them”

“The equipment is here in the safe house, so after this batch, the safe house can continue to train people, so it becomes like a mini skill acquisition centre”

Speaking on the purpose of the Blooming Dames safe house, the Executive Director, Pan African Purpose-Driven Women Initiative, Mrs Oluwatoyin Ogedengbe said the mission is to provide a transformative and structured environment that supports women in overcoming exploitative circumstances.

According to Mrs. Ogedengbe, the idea is also to transit them into safe and dignified career paths, through faith based discipleship, trauma-informed care, mentorship, vocational training, access to entrepreneurial resources and tools for launching sustainable livelihoods.

She said “This partnership started in 2017, we’ve been going to different locations in Ibadan, we initially focused on Ibadan North local government, we’ve carried out medical outreaches, evangelical outreaches, so in 2020, we had twelve women who ran through different acquisition programmes and we bought start up tools for them and graduation ceremony was done”

“In 2024 we moved to Mokola area, some of these areas are brothels and some of these people are survivor of trafficking, quite a number of them are from the middle belt and from the south-south. When we started, we used to have a lot from Edo and Delta, but recently, we are having more from Benue probably because of the insecurity in the area”

“So the safe house opened on the 14th of May, 2025 to incorporate residential rehabilitation into the programme, so what we’ve been doing over the years is that the ladies will come, acquire the skills and go back to their brothels, but now the safe house is a place where they can come and live for a period of six to nine months, when they are learning the skills. We take responsibility for their feeding, accommodation and total wellbeing so that they are comfortable and not thinking of going back.”

She explained that the focal sustainable development Goals for the Implementation of the Blooming Dames Centre Programme include SDG 1 which address poverty, SDG 8 – decent work and economic growth; and SDG 17 which stressed the need for partnership for the goals.

Also speaking, Oyo state commissioner for women affairs and social inclusion, Mrs Toyin Balogun, represented by the ministry’s gender officer, Mrs. Akinpelu Adebukola commended the initiative saying it was a project that ensures national progress.

She said everybody should be treated as valuable if the country wants to thread on the part of development.

More: NewsArena.ng