In today's episode, I am absolutely thrilled to speak with our first ever international guest, Irene Bangwell from Raising Girls in Nigeria.

Irene and I connected over our respective Facebook groups, Raising Girl Shaped Flames and her Parenting Champions Community. We instantly connected over our shared values, beliefs, and of course, our hopes and dreams for young girls in each of our countries, myself in Australia, and Irene is in Nigeria.

I can genuinely say that this was one of the most empowering, exhilarating, insightful discussions I've had with a guest on this program to date. What we cover in this episode is so aligned, and really heartening to find someone on the other side of the world that not only believes so infallibly in the premise of Girl Shaped Flames and why I've started and what we're doing, but also the fact that she's over there doing it herself.

The work that Irene is doing to support parents in Nigeria predominantly to raise strong, confident, independent girls, brimming with self worth.

I do want to flag up front that we touch on a couple of topics that might be sensitive to some listeners, but I do want to stress: everything we spoke about is very real and very now, and is being experienced right now by thousands of girls in Nigeria. 

In today's discussion, we do cover a lot of ground including:

• Her own personal confidence journey and influences from a teenager to now
• The importance of the proactive development of confidence in young girls
• An example of what life is like for a 15 year old girl in Nigeria
• Some of the key challenges girls in Nigeria face when building their confidence
• Some of the key challenges parents face when trying to raise confident daughters in Nigeria
• We also spoke about The KNOSK N100-a-day Secondary School, Kuje that Irene runs

About Irene Bangwell​
Irene is the Co-founder, The KNOSK N100-a-day Secondary School, Kuje and Raising Girls Coach at Parenting Champions in Nigeria.