A bright and beautiful day it was as I drove to meet my guest for this week. When I got to the venue of the meeting, it was easy to tell that the ‘100 voices’ initiative was in full gear. I saw young ladies and few men donning lovely T-shirts with ‘100 voices’ printed in bright colours. They were all looking radiant and it was easy to conclude they were having a nice time. “What exactly is 100 voices about?” you may be asking. Well, follow me closely and you will find out.
I asked one of them to take me to meet the person I came to look for. Apparently, she had been told I was coming, so she asked, “You are Aunty Kemi, right?” “Am I safe?” I teased and she laughed.
While we made our way to meet my guest, I asked her what the 100 voices initiative meant to her and, with a grin that spoke volumes already, she responded, “My name is Adeleye Adeola Foluso. I am one of the lucky participants and I am excited to be brought to Lagos all the way from Kano and every moment spent so far has been worth it. I had the opportunity to learn from her success at home and in business.” We chatted all the way till I got to my guest. Wearing the same type of T-shirt with the participants, she looked so much like them and I could feel love in the atmosphere. It was like a large united family of different faces but same spirit.
“I also must tell you what this programme means to me,” Olawale Durojaiye interjected as my guest took me away to a serene environment so we could start the interview.
“Please come along, I will like to hear,” I responded. Three, they say, is a crowd, but Olawale was such fun and bubbly. “I represent a cause,” he began, “to promote the brand, to tell every woman that independence is the mother of all sexiness, to show the men that every woman is wonderful and beautiful, to tell the world that in order to make the world a better place we need to keep tears of sadness away, we need to keep the girls and women from rape; no more tears from wife battery, tears from gender segregation. I came here but I am leaving more empowered.” As he concluded, my guest and I clapped for him. He took a bow and left us.
Enough of the suspense already… My guest today is none other than the ever vibrant Tara Fela-Durotoye. Tara is a Nigerian make-up artist and lawyer; a pioneer in the makeup profession in Nigeria. After she graduated from Lagos State University, she proceeded to start a beauty company (House of Tara) which included a world-class makeup studio and the first makeup school in Nigeria. She is the CEO of House of Tara International which specialises in bridal makeup, home-service gele tying, studio makeover and the Tara Orekelewa makeup product line. The company was established in 1998 and now has franchises all over Lagos, Ibadan, Port Harcourt and Abuja. It is about to expand into Ghana, Senegal and Cotonou.
Read also: FCMB, Tara unveil BBOG, plan to empower 5,000 entrepreneurs
“Teaching and developing people was an innate skill for me,” she told me as the interview began. “I found myself constantly training young children when I went on holidays to my grandma. In secondary school, I set up school fellowships teaching my juniors biblical principles. This set precedence for how our business model is run – the main objective being to empower and develop people.”
What then is the 100 voices initiative about? “I embarked on this project to inspire and empower our beauty representatives across Nigeria,” she told me. “These reps range from students to housewives to make-up artists, business owners and more, and each of these beauty reps has inspiring success stories to share with the public. To celebrate these successful reps, House of Tara has started ‘100 VOICES’, a project where each of the beauty reps sent in their success stories of 250 words and it was read by 10 inspiring Nigerian women among whom are Ibukun Awosika, TY Bello, Linda Ikeji, Uche of Bella Naija, and more. These women read and selected their best stories and those chosen are the ones you see here today. The stories they wrote along with their profile pictures will be further published in a coffee table book titled ‘100 Voices’ which would be distributed nationally and internationally. It is my way of celebrating them, they are stars and they deserve to shine.”
Looking back till date, Tara says she has no regrets going into her line of business. “In this industry by God’s grace, we have been able to set up, train and develop many people. Most especially, the lives we have built through the business model, the enterprise that has been set up, the stories of transformation that we have heard from our beauty representatives across the country are very encouraging.”
Tara’s business has grown far beyond where they started. She tells more: “We started out as a bridal makeup company. As we went along, we branched out to the makeup school with the vision of training and developing makeup artists for the industry. We have seen our trained artists work with other brands in the country like Casabella, Blackup, MAC, Flori Roberts and others. We also branched out to manufacturing our own product line, which has become a vehicle for empowering young and enterprising women to gain financial independence. Also, the makeup studio caters to all makeup needs, not just the bridal service which was our singular source. My perfume ‘Be Inspired’ is also another addition to what we have.”
If you had always thought that beauty is all about cosmetics, then you guessed wrong. Tara sheds more light on this. “Beauty is both inward and outward – mental, physical and spiritual. The combination is what I consider to be beauty. For example, kindness, consideration, confidence, spiritual connection to one’s maker and knowing what hairstyle, makeup and clothing compliment you are some of the things that make up one’s beauty.”
Interesting revelation from Tara, but all these do not come without their challenges. “The challenges are endless,” she says. “Government policies, power, high operational cost due to inefficiencies at organisational and community level are major challenges, but in all of these, God assures us of peace even in the midst of the storm.”
Being herself a product of mentorship, Tara speaks on its importance. “I am a product of mentorship. I have been mentored by the US state department/ FORTUNE mentoring programme, and currently being mentored on the World Economic Forum platform. I was recently nominated as a Young Global Leader, class of 2013. I have gained significantly from mentorship and I mentor as well. Apart from informal mentorship, some of the platforms I mentor on are FATE Foundation and WIMBIZ. As a beneficiary, the First Bank loan for the company was as a result of the introduction from one of my mentors. Personal concerns have been assuaged as a result of right counsel. Strategic business decisions have been as a result of counsel from my mentors. Spiritual mentorship has aided spiritual growth and fuelled the desire for a deeper and closer relationship with God. Mentorship is important and you can’t go wrong if you are counselled rightly from someone who is indeed worthy to be called a mentor.”
