Association of Nigerian Women Entrepreneurs and Professionals (ANWEP)

ANWEP Covid-19 Literacy Project targeting African Immigrant Communities in Texas. Purpose: to engage the African immigrant community in the state of Texas in proactive COVID19 vaccine education and outreach activities with the goal of increasing the number of people fully vaccinated for COVID-19 in Texas. ANWEP will target the African immigrant communities in Texas with the aim to a Increase trust regarding the COVID-19 vaccine b Increase access to and provide navigation support for obtaining the vaccine and vaccine booster COVID-19 testing and personal protective equipment PPE c Provide education about vaccine facts transmissibility how to keep children safe and COVID-19 general information.

We offer free mentorship workshops in STEM to girls in Dallas Denton Tarrant and Collin Counties. Our Empower Girls in STEM mentorship program is designed to recruit support and promote women in science healthcare engineering and beyond through our online and in-person mentorship workshops. Our programs help girls identify pathways to careers in STEM through engagement with professional women in STEM-related fields and STEM experiences provided by peer organizations such as Society of Women Engineers SWE and Women in STEM Leadership WISL. What we know from examining research and best practice is that many different kinds of mentoring relationships contribute to persistence in college and within STEM specifically. Students are more likely to persist in STEM when they experience a combination of a socio-emotional mentoring functions such as encouragement or role modeling and b instrumental mentoring functions including academic support college navigation and career coaching. When students have multiple mentors from a variety of contexts across home school and the community they are more likely to persist in their choice of academic discipline with a high success rate upon graduation. The ANWEP Empower Girls in STEM initiative is designed to give underrepresented groups particularly girls and women a window into STEM careers through mentorship and role modeling. It is Ogechi's mission to increase the number of women in STEM through ANWEP's career-focused programs and initiatives.

ANWEP also secured another grant from the Dallas County Health and Human Services to advance health literacy by incorporating Covid-19 related messaging into existing programs that serve populations at high-risk of severe illness and or hospitalization if they become infected with COVID. This program specifically targeted African immigrant communities in Dallas County.