The group has grown fast, and its success has piqued the interest of Facebook leaders besides Zuckerberg. And when, in a tragic turn of events, the FINster lost her daughter, Abdulrahman wrote her first post, to mourn the baby's death. She began chatting with the FINster directly, staying in regular contact. "I didn't know a lot of people went through that," she says. When Fatty Giwa Abdulrahman joined two years ago, one of the first posts to catch her attention was from a woman who talked about fertility issues similar to her own. Among the rules: do not judge, do not share outside the group, do not give unsolicited advice. Strict ground rules are enforced by a team of more than two dozen moderators. Events have been held in cities around the world, including Lagos, Johannesburg, London, Houston and the Washington, D.C., area. She and others organize real-world events where group members can meet. Omolola's success with FIN comes from a few strategies: curating interesting stories and encouraging women to respond to each other. Lola Omolola's success comes from a few strategies: curating interesting stories and encouraging women to respond to each other. "Most of us just didn't realize how widespread the practices were because we'd normalized them," Omolola says. Before the #MeToo movement broke the silence around widespread sexual assault, FIN encouraged women to share their stories. The group has since had many threads on women, their hair and their husbands.įIN has taken on far heavier issues too, like domestic violence. Instead, women started sharing their own similar experiences in the comments thread. Omolola posted the story, figuring FINsters (as she calls them) would likely discuss it, "like pundits do," she says.īut that's not what happened. The hairdresser told her she needed a permission slip from her husband first. One story was about a woman in Nigeria who wanted to get her hair cut short, like a boy. Omolola also shared stories she found on the Internet, mostly on Facebook and Twitter, about women's issues. She organized real-world meetups and encouraged women to respond to each other respectfully. First she invited friends, who invited friends. "I just knew I wanted to find them at the very least, so that I wouldn't be by myself, because I felt really lonely."īut Omolola turned that loneliness into action. "I didn't know what I was going to do," she says. Omolola says it shook her and she needed a way to be part of her country's mourning and healing.Īll Tech Considered Facebook Changes Its Mission With Announcement About Groups "Whenever I turned on the radio and television, everyone was talking about the terrorism angle," recalls Omolola, who grew up in Lagos and now lives in Chicago.įor her, the kidnapping represented the worst form of patriarchy: men were targeting young women for getting an education. Its genesis can be traced to 2014, when nearly 300 girls were kidnapped from a boarding school in Nigeria by the Boko Haram militant group. FIN originally stood for Female in Nigeria, but as its reach grew to other countries, Omolola recast it simply as Female IN. She's the founder of FIN, a private Facebook group - with nearly 1.7 million members - that has become a support network for women around the globe. One person who embodies Zuckerberg's message is Lola Omolola, an ebullient 41-year-old Nigerian-American woman who was highlighted at Facebook's annual conference in May. Lola Omolola is the founder of FIN, a private Facebook group with nearly 1.7 million members that has become a support network for women around the globe.Īs Facebook struggles to repair its image after a global privacy scandal, the social media giant is trying to make the platform a place that Mark Zuckerberg says encourages "meaningful interactions between people."
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