Kelechi Oghene: Giving back, touching lives, inspires me

• Published date: 15 January 2023
• Publication title: Nigeria - The Nation

Kelechi Oghene is CEO GMYT Fashion Academy; a designer, entrepreneur, philanthropist and a successful model. In this interview with Yetunde Oladeinde, she opens up on her inspiration, mentoring young people and creating opportunities for them to start small business that thrive.

This year you are celebrating your 10th anniversary and honouring those who have made great impact in the sector. What does this mean to you?

Its awesome. I feel really excited. Today is our 10th anniversary. We are also taking on another step to empower more people, say 1000 for next year. We are actuallykicked it off with 100 this evening. We are also going to be giving start up funds and also sewing machines to empower them. I feel really fulfilled doing this?

How many people have been touched in your empowerment projects?

We have about 25 for sewing machines and also funds for the best graduating students and we have three of them. The first is getting N500, 000, second N300, 000 and the third will get N200, 000.It is one thing to start and then to give them the skill. This year we have given out over 300machines and we want to do 400 and actually give out more. Also next year, we are also looking at giving out 500 machines without sponsors but if we have sponsors we are going to do much more.

Let talk about how it all started and the driving force for you?

My mum was a seamstress and so it started from the house. I have been in the fashion industry for about 16 years. So, this is just one of the babies and actually a group of companies. It is the GMYT Group which includes Hostel Accommodation, Fashion Academy, GMYT Foundation, The GAHAWARDS and more. We are actually supposed to launch our App today and it has been years of experience. And it has not been all successful but everything has been a learning curve. I used to have a restaurant, used to have a saloon as well and after all the investments, it didn't work. So, it has not been all rosy but these are the surviving companies. The bottom line is that all the companies are giving back, impacting lives.

There have been a lot of testimonies from the beneficiaries, what were the criteria used for selection?

We actually have three different categories. We have those who are now beginning to be opened to collaborations from other organizations, then we have those that the NYSC is going to be sponsoring. We are waiving tuition fees, so that you can come on board, learn for free.

We have another set, here we are partnering with Industrial...