How Lola Omolola started one of the fastest growing groups in Facebook’s history 🌐 Lola Omolola of Female IN (FIN)
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Episode at a glance:
GUEST: Lola Omolola
COMMUNITY: Female IN (FIN)
HOSTS: Bailey Richardson & Kevin Huynh
“Whenever we're vulnerable, it enhances our ability to connect.” - Lola Omolola
Show Notes
Troubled by Boko Haram’s kidnapping of Nigerian schoolgirls in 2014, Lola Omolola decided it was time to act. She remembers: “My initial idea was was to create a space where I could find women who were like me, who were as worried about the same thing, so we could all come together and form some sort of a resource.”
Members of Lola’s Facebook group meet in person too. They call themselves “FINsters.” Photograph via FIN’s Facebook
Lola decided to start “Female In Nigeria” (FIN), a private Facebook group to explore issues facing Nigerian women. She invited friends, who invited friends, to join the group — women located mostly in Nigeria, but also throughout the diaspora.
Today, FIN (which now stands for Female IN to reflect a broader group of women) has 1.7 million members and gets hundreds of post applications every day. The Facebook Group is managed by 28 volunteer moderators, including Lola.
But how did Lola get the first conversations started? How did the first members find out about FIN? We called her in Chicago to learn more.
Photograph by Kai Elmer Sotto
Three Takeaways from Lola
1. If you don’t care, don’t expect anyone else to.
Lola’s genuine passion and personal experiences informed the early stories that she posted on the page. “In those days, I knew what the issues were that women were not talking about openly,” she told us. “These things didn’t get talked about in the media. Everyone was saying that they were trying to highlight the big ideas, but what about the small stuff?” The anecdotes she found and shared were about challenges Nigerian women had to deal with every single day, and they resonated deeply with her audience.
2. Role model the behavior you want to see.
Lola stoked the flame on the FIN Facebook page by posting remarkable quotes from non-members, but soon enough FIN members started sharing their own. “I would highlight another woman’s voice and make that clear by using quotes. That communicated to members that they could and should tell their own experience as well,” she told us. “Immediately their responses were so raw. And so more people were just sharing and sharing.” These powerful responses from members became the next quotes Lola would share in the group, creating a reciprocal storytelling cycle.
3. Commit to diversifying from your original members.
When Lola decided to open FIN up to non-Nigerian women, many members were afraid that the group would lose the intimacy that made it special. Lola’s response to them was clear: “What you’re saying is that we should actively lock out women who want to be here? That’s not fair.” Lola commitment to diversifying the group goes back to her original impetus for starting the community. “It wasn’t just about finding people who were like me,” Lola said. “I was finding people who were passionate about what was important to me.” For her, helping people who shared her passion was more important than keeping the demographics preserved.
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