Growing Girlz will change lives -Leading model/actress, Wumi Obanla

Wumi

Leggy model and sexy actress Wumi Obanla has a new project up her sleeves. The pretty and single entertainer recently floated Growing Girlz Foundation, aimed at empowering and assisting young girls achieve their God-given talents in life. In this interview,  the Economics graduate of Lagos State University (LASU), revealed her reasons for wanting to give back to the society, plans for 2014 among other interesting areas of her public life.

What is Growing Girlz all about?  

It’s all about the young girls. It is a nonprofit organisation that is aimed at bringing up our young ladies in the right way. I want to reach out to the younger girls…The essence is to pick them from the streets and either send them back to school or  get them to learn one or two things. We put the responsibility on ourselves to ensure they become better persons in future. Our mission is to provide a platform for young females to voice out their experience, so as to educate and inspire up and coming ones toward remaining steadfast to their goals in life. In other word, Growing Girlz is a brand concept designed to create an egalitarian society for young females thus breaking the barriers often induced by lack of direction, early mistakes in life and lack of financial support.

Are you partnering with any organization?

We have the intention to partner with UNICEF, Ministry of Human Affairs, saloons, and fashion designers, among so many others so that they can help in training those who wouldn’t want to go back to school.

What inspired you into this?

I just want to be the voice for the young girls. As a model and actress, I have seen it all. It is what I have always wanted to do. I have always dreamed and hoped of having an opportunity to assist those who have no one to assist them. The issue is that, most times the female child is being neglected; there are some certain things that we can’t just continue to overlook. For instance, the girl child is supposed to grow up with her parents and end up living with her husband. Those are the two places that the girl child should live, not with uncles or even strangers. Some who ended up living with their uncles or some sorts of strangers ended up being sexually abused or neglected. We keep seeing lots of prostitutes on the streets and we don’t try to ascertain how they ended up like that. So those are the issues we want to address. Whatever a girl goes through in her childhood goes a long way in shaping her life.

How are you going about this?

For now, I’m starting with the NGO and the radio programme. I think that is one of the best ways to reach out to them. Television is going to be integrated soon. I will have a radio programme where some of these girls will be invited to come and tell their stories. From their stories we will find means to either send them back to school or train them in their choice hand works.

How do you go about discovering these girls and bringing them together?

We will be going from state to state. We started from Lagos, now we are moving to Abuja, after which we will move into another state. Already, we have some girls in our care. We are already in partnership with a particular saloon. Most times we go to the market places, we try to talk to some of them hawking around.

What message do you actually intend passing to the public?

Wherever we find ourselves; whatever we are doing, let’s just try and assist people in our own little way. If we all do this, life will become a better place for all of us. If we fail to help the less privilege today, they may later become our future problem. The armed robbers and prostitutes we see today did not just wake up and started it…issues in life must have pushed them into such messy act. It might even get to a level where no one would be able to sleep with two eyes closed.

Now that the train has moved to Abuja, where else after Abuja?

Ilorin.

Why didn’t you start from your state?

I don’t believe I must start from my state. Everybody is my brother, everybody is my sister. I don’t really care about where I start from as long as human beings are benefiting from it.

How much success have you recorded so far?

So much! On the other hand, we’ve sent out some proposals, and at the moment still waiting responses. We need support from Nigerians so as to be able to carry out this noble objective. This is a really worthwhile objective and I believe through this we can have better mothers, sisters and daughters in future. We are open to supports from individuals and corporate organizations.

How do you combine this with your acting career?  

It doesn’t stop anything. The difference is that I am now busier than before. I still do my commercials and movies.

Tell us more about yourself

I’m a graduate of Economics from the Lagos State University. Apart from acting, I’m also a model. I’ve been in the modeling industry for over eight years. My acting career just began about a year ago, which means I’m known more as a model than an actress. I have so much passion for both acting and modeling that I believe my life depends on them.

Talking about your acting career, is it something you stumbled into, or you knew you were going to become one while growing up?

Acting is something I’ve always loved. Though I’m a shy person, I always knew I could do it, but for the fact that I don’t have too much courage was what was hindering me. But at a time I had to just prepare myself for the challenges, all I needed then was an encouragement which I got from my parents. Even when I didn’t discover it myself, people saw it in me. People were always encouraging me; they would tell me ‘’Wumi you are good, you can do it, why don’t you go for it?’’ It was one of my friends that even introduced me to modeling.  At a time I just wanted to face my education which was why I didn’t start acting on time. I had to wait till graduation and NYSC, before entering the industry full time. I also wanted to be able to do my own movies, which I’m doing now. 

 By JAMES EMMANUEL

jemedia7@gmail.com