This past Saturday was a busy and interesting day for me.
I was up as early as 7 am to attend two events in the Mississauga area. The 1st event was on financial literacy. A polite Nigerian gentleman I met at a previous Nigerian event works for the organizing company. He has been very dogged in trying to convince me to attend one of the classes. Yesterday morning he offered to drive me to the event venue and I obliged him. I arrived the event and disliked it on arrival. The reason? It had the smell of networking marketing. I know some people who have successfully made money from network marketing, but I know far more people who have lost a lot of cash and hated the journey. One of the people in the second category includes me. Some three years ago, in the oil city of Port Harcourt, I showed up at one of such events and over the course of a month invested some money in health products that didn’t go anywhere. These days I’ve become more wary of network marketers home or abroad.
I was able to still gather some positives from the event. The CEO for one of the strongest networking links in the business is… wait for it… a Nigerian. This man had the thickest Yoruba accent and struggled with his sentence structure throughout his speech, but the whole room of some 200 people was glued to every word he spoke. Every now and again, they’d break out cheering, and loudly exclaiming, ‘awesome!’ to the tips he loudly dished out. Another positive was the diversity of his audience- Nigerian, Ghanaian, Vietnamese, Asian, Latino and so on and so forth. Personally, I’m looking for financial literacy education on the Canadian economy, and how to invest in the right type of portfolio here.
My next stop was the Peel Multicultural Council for a newcomers event organized for Nigerians. The wonderful thing about how I learned of this event, was that it was through my twitter page. The convener reached out and asked me if I would be interested in attending the event, and I went a step further to say I would like to volunteer. Volunteering is very important in this part of the world and is a crucial approach to building your network. I thoroughly enjoyed myself at this meeting. In addition to me, there were 5 other volunteers, predominantly Punjabi. We were to work with our Co-convener- a confident, and very supportive Sikh. This guy did a great job of making us volunteers comfortable in the beginning, and assigning us work assignments for the day. For the meeting, we had a successful Nigerian/Canadian business entrepreneur called Mychopchop speak to us about starting a business as an entrepreneur, and then we had another Guinean/Canadian speaker talk about her project on HIV/AIDS with the black communities here.
In true Nigerian fashion, an event that was scheduled to begin at 4 pm didn’t kick off until 5.30pm. Some calls had to be put across to attendees before we could start. When we wrapped up the event at 7 pm, a few attendees still showed up at the door. smh…
All in all, it was an important way to make new friends, and of course feast on some Naija delicacy… so much for me wanting to get on the LIN meal plan.
I got back home at 8.30pm and spent most of Sunday sleeping it off, and lazying around in bed.
13 comments
From what I’ve learned in research about Canada, networking is an important part of pushing ip in your career, so most associations you make would not necessarily be a waste of time. It’s good that you’re finding your way around to events and such. Volunteering is also great.
Just keep doing you and steer clear of anything you don’t trust. You’ll be fine. Have a great week!
Thanks a lot. Really good advice about following my intuition. I’m learning more and more to trust it
Network marketing biz in my city put you off? Alliance Global?
I’m on the same page with you about network marketing, I’ve lost cash and done with it.
Good thing there were still positives from the event.
Yay! Thank God your blog is back. I don’t like networking marketing too. It’s a lot of stress. I’m glad your volunteer job turned out well. Do attend more events cos it will help you connect with lots of people and also create an active environment for you. Ehen on to the gist part, what’s up with the Nigerian with the accent? While I read the part where you wrote about him I kept asking myself how he aced his IELTS.
I wish you all the best in your endeavours.
Sure glad it is dear. Hear, hear on volunteer jobs. Thanks a lot Adaeze. On the IELTS, remember not everyone wrote the exam when migrating to Canada. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
You changed your hairdo… and i think your makeup too 🙂
Loooooool. Check again now. I’m sure we are back to regular programming
Hi,
I really love reading all about your adventure..I can’t wait to quit my job and start afresh in a much more organised society.. waiting for more post *winks*
Hi Dropdeaddiva, congratulations ahead. Thanks a lot for dropping by. Pls use the subscribe button so you are notified when new posts come out. Cheers
Hello,
I just stumbled on this blog today. Keep up the good work✌and I’m some months old in Canada as well.
I really don’t mind attending the Peel Multicultural Event too if there is any one coming up.
Hi Olubunmi, thank you for stumbling by…lol. Pls remember to subscribe for future blog posts. The Nigerian event was one-off but the Peel Multicultural Council is available to support all newcomers in Canada.
Trust me, I am already a subsriber. I have been a silent reading referred from naria land. I would like to read about your shopping trips , salon trips if you have had any and even your journey to getting your PPR,although I think it may be belated.
Hi DDD, hope I can call you that. I’ll talk about my salon trip once I’m done with one. Shopping is pretty easy here. Lots of malls, shopping plazas and centres. My PPR is very linear and standard & that’s why I wrote about why I decided to relocate, versus the step by step process