Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg met with Nigeria’s Lola Omolola, the founder of a secret Facebook group called “Females In Nigeria” (FIN), Tuesday.
FIN is an anonymous, no-holds-barred platform, where Nigerian women can express themselves without shame.
According to Bellanaija, the group encourages members who call themselves “FINsters” to talk frankly about everything, from marriage to sex to career and health-related issues, without the disapproving eyes of society.
Chicago-based Omolola founded the group in 2015 to provide a virtual support network for Nigerian women irrespective of social or professional affiliation. At inception, the group had a goal of having at least 1,000 members, but it has since exceeded its target with more than 1 million members now on the platform.
In a post on his Facebook page, Zuckerberg recently announced that he will be meeting with Omolola and several other top Facebook group admins for the first Facebook Communities Summit in Chicago:
Over the past few weeks I’ve been meeting group admins across the country who are building meaningful communities on Facebook and will be at the summit. This photo is with Lola, who lives in Chicago and is originally from Nigeria. Two years ago, she founded a secret Facebook group called Female IN, or FIN.
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I’m looking forward to meeting more admins like Lola and talking about how we can help them do even more to build community. I’ll share more info on the summit as we get closer, and I’ll stream the event live from my profile later this month.
Lola Omolola. Photo credit: The Spark
Responding to Zuckerberg’s post, Lola acknowledged his “relentless drive to connect our world”:
Thank you so much Mark for this honorable mention.
Were it not for your relentless drive to connect our world and your assembly of the brightest minds in the universe to bring this dream to life, FIN would not have been probable.
Certainly not at this scale.
I’m an ordinary woman from modest means and your vision; our shared vision to advance meaningful connection, is now helping women across the world to find our voices through FIN; our non-judgmental Facebook support group.
Thank you for helping me create the world I wish to live in and have my 8 and 10-year-old inherit.
Your outstanding team at Facebook, our indefatigable admin team and my irrepressible FINsters make this all possible.
Thank you! and see you in Chicago.
