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A lot Of People Don’t Really Know What Charity Is All About – Empress

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 Empress Njamah is one of Nollywood’s topmost actresses. In this interview with our reporter, she talks about her fashion line and her charity organisation.

Your charity organisation has been your major focus in recent years, how is it doing?
The charity is doing well. We have not been throwing the big passes with the charity, but we are working with schools and trying to help children health wise and through their education.
What are you working on presently?
I have been working on my ready-to-wear; my shoe line and my clothing line, which will be launching very soon. I source my fabric from the best in Italy, my shoes come from Italy and I have multiple tailors who join things together for me.
Doing so much, won’t your acting career suffer?
It won’t. I have been making movies. I just returned from Lagos State, and I did about three movies while I was there. I do try to see if I could find time to shuffle everything together.
Why have we not seen a movie from your production outfit?
Well, I will not say that that is compulsory. I can’t do everything at the same time because my hands are obviously full. But in the nearest future, we are working on something so that we can get good scripts that we can work on.
But my charity project is taking so much of my time and it’s quite huge. I have done one or two, but professionally my first movie would be about the children, charity work and all of that. It is why we are working on getting a story that we can involve the children and also make sure that we can inform and educate a lot of other people who don’t know what charity is all about.
People see charity from different perspective and a lot of people don’t know that these children need a lot of love and care from people. You mustn’t give a million Naira, but the love, the little you can give, matters.  We are just trying to put everything together to see how we can project the story to be able to tell a huge tale to the viewers out there, so that they can understand a bit of what charity is because we cannot do it all in one movie.
What is your take on actors and actresses who go to motherless babies homes with a bag of rice and some Indomie noodles and later share pictures on social media?
I don’t know. However, I will talk about myself. Some people like the paparazzi. If you noticed, we had the Easter celebration and the children celebration,; but till now I haven’t had time to share the pictures. A lot of people have been asking why, but I am not doing it for the paparazzi feel.
Some people even say that most times if I post the pictures it will encourage other people, but I feel one or two persons who attended can post and share messages. But I am not there to post or share pictures or whatever. The most important thing is that when you are doing charity, do it genuinely. I have been in this for 15 years and it is not a joke. So, basically if they want to go with a bag of rice, maybe that’s what they have. If people want to go with a bag of rice and take a thousand pictures maybe that’s their own idea of charity, but I will talk about myself and thank the people who have come out to help me. I don’t collect money; I have never collected money for my charity from the first day I started.
Many people are saying that I should involve a lot of people, but I have a problem with rejection, so I really don’t want to ask one or two persons and I am being rejected. If it is what I want to do and I am doing it, why don’t I just carry the cross? If you want to be part of it, fine.
Most times, you see all these people saying that they support charity, but behind the closet it is actually zero, that is the truth. For me not to kill the spirit that has been burning in me for charity, I would rather carry my cross. So, maybe those people who you were talking about don’t understand the nitty-gritty of what charity entails.
Sometimes, it’s probably good if they want to lecture about it or probably turn that one bag of rice into something that will touch or educate the child. Basically, most people should go into the stores of these charity homes and see what they have and what they do not have. So that they don’t go and give what the charity has. They should also look for the expiry dates of the products.
A lot of people don’t understand this charity thing. This is important because we need to make sure that these children don’t eat expired foods and we now have to start looking for money to take them to hospitals.
You have been quoted saying that your charity is solely sponsored by you, is the position still the same?
Yes, it’s being solely funded by me. Anyone who can say he has actually given me money or anything for the charity can come out and counter what I have said. But I am telling you that from the books I have supported some people.
What inspired your fashion line?
I am trying to bring something affordable to people. I am not a vain person like that. I am not that kind of person who wants to come out looking crème de la crème. I am actually a simple dress kind of person, but I actually feel that we could actually do one or two things that are affordable because people often run away from expensive things. So, we are trying to bring something that you can actually wear for all occasions and it’s still affordable.
I started my boutique 10 years ago, though a lot of people don’t know that. People have been telling me to bring what I do to the social media and I have listened to my customers and I am bringing my products there. I won’t tell you that I was inspired because I saw a woman. My inspiration comes from my head. It’s just part of what I want to do for people. Since funds for charity are not coming like it used to come, we are still trying to see how we can actually raise funds; we have actually earmarked a percentage of what we sell for charity and that is why we are bringing the House of Empress to social media to see how well we can actually do something for charity.
How expensive is the Empress brand?
You can get something for as low as N 4,000.00 or N5, 000.00, but my most expensive shoe is $300 – it’s handmade.
Do you sell your stuff in Dollars, because you just inferred that?
There is a particular brand I sell in Dollars. A lot of people do not know about it, but individually a lot of people have been buying. If you see a good thing you will buy. So, we are bringing it to Instagram via houseofempress.com It’s a new page we just opened. We will be posting things there soon.

 

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