Gloria’s story
“They say it takes a whole village to raise a child and when our girls go on to do well it really feels like it’s everyone’s achievement too.”
Gloria is the longest serving member of staff at Wavecrest College of Hospitality, our local partner in Nigeria. She has been teaching at the school for 28 years and has seen the school grow from four students in one teaching block to a highly recognised hospitality school.
Her drive? Seeing the young women she teaches develop and succeed. “When the girls first start out at Wavecrest, they’re not confident. They don’t believe in themselves. Often, they have little or no knowledge about hospitality, but as graduates they achieve so much. They become self-reliant; some of them don’t even have employers but work for themselves.”
That’s one of the things that keeps me here, seeing the results and development of all the girls here, it’s worth it.
Wavecrest College not only equips young women with technical and professional skills but also with the soft skills they need to enter good employment and break free from the cycle of poverty. The mentoring program at Wavecrest College is a major component of the student experience. Each student is assigned a mentor when she begins her education at Wavecrest.
The school’s whole-person approach to teaching builds young women’s confidence and resilience, giving them the tools to adapt their skills to every new situation they face and to be leaders in their own lives. “You don’t look at the technical parts alone, you work with the person and find out their areas of strength and develop them”, Gloria explains.
An education at Wavecrest College enables its graduates to gain stable, well-paid employment, empowering women to support themselves and their families’ too. A Wavecrest graduate can double her family income in post-graduation employment. Therefore, the transformative change created by vocational training not only impacts Wavecrest students, but entire families and communities too!
Gloria adds: “Our students are not just earning certificates but continuing to develop themselves and go on to achieve a lot in industry. They say it takes a whole village to raise a child and when our girls go on to do well it really feel like it’s everyone’s achievement too.”
