Natures Gentle Touch Hair Institute provides a rare opportunity to empower individuals and alleviate poverty through world-class education in hair designing and artistry.
Located within the serenity of Jide Oki Street, Victoria Island, Lagos is a marble-walled duplex adorned with a twin coconut tree and well manicured flowers. This alluring building is the home to one of Africa’s most prestigious
conservatoire of beauty and style education. Known as the Natures Gentle Touch Hair Institute, the academy was established in 2006 by one of the leading researchers in African skin, hair and personal care, and manufacturers of the Natures Gentle Touch range of hair care products, Recare Limited.
The Natures Gentle Touch Hair Institute was established with a mission to bridge the gap in beauty and style knowledge, and to use its platform to empower individuals with the skills, confidence and connection to exploit the immense potentials in the beauty, style and personal care industry. Prior to its establishment, Recare Limited identified the imbalance with the demand for professional stylists to its supply. With a growing sophistication in style and a blooming fashion, entertainment, beauty and mass media industries, image and appearance gained top priority without a balanced provision of professional styling services to accommodate this. From styling of a photo shoot to being a beauty magazine columnist, a lucrative opportunity to empower women and youths was established thereby providing an avenue for socio-economic growth and individual self sustenance.
In tune with the serenity of the environment where the Natures Gentle Touch Hair Institute is located is the inner ambience of the academy itself. Designed to inspire students to set free their creativity and to communicate the prestige of the hair styling profession, the institute is set to elevate the artistry of hair styling to international standards. At the institute, what we normally refer to as hair dressing, is called the art of hair designing. What is offered is not the same thing as what is taught in street corners and other beauty schools across the city. Students are taught to understand hair designing as an art, and as such will require the most creative of minds to reap its
full potentials. They are taught to understand that hair styling is an art that is as creative as a Picasso painting or a Deola Sagoe design or an Asa song or a Kelechi Amadi-Obi imagery. A qualified hair stylist is an artist and a designer who has a major influence in defining style and beauty trends.
At the institute, students are exposed to every realm of the profession to enable them appreciate their contribution and influence in fashion, beauty, style and image making. These exposures come through practical styling experiences whenever the institute is invited to style models for photo shoots, fashion shows and other celebrity events. Here the students get the opportunity to express their skills first-hand and get the needed confidence to make their impact in the industry.
With a fully equipped state-of-the art hair styling equipment and multimedia lecture rooms, the Natures Gentle Touch Hair Institute boasts of a faculty of accomplished stylists and instructors with international exposure that deliver inspiring courses which enables the students understand the philosophy of the profession and draw an inspiration from there to embrace their own creativity. Varying courses in hair designing are offered such as a 9-months beginners course for individuals without any previous knowledge in hair styling and various short courses on salon
management, advanced hair cutting, bridal styles, creative hair styling, image consultancy and celebrity hair styling for practicing stylists.
The course delivery is as much theoretical as it is practical with topics ranging from hair science, product chemistry, personality management, salon management, client care to chemical application, cutting & styling techniques, scalp & hair treatment, braiding & fixing amongst others.
A MASSIVE EMPOWERMENT OPPORTUNITY
Understanding the huge potentials that the beauty and personal care industry portends towards helping us achieve both individual and communal sustenance will help grasp the huge investment in this academy by Natures Gentle Touch. A well-trained stylist has the potentials to make a great impact in various other fields beyond the salon. For example, a stylist can work in the media industry as a beauty care expert, or work in the product development department of a cosmetic brand. He/She can also be employed as a platform artist or work as a representative for
beauty and personal style companies.
With the society’s constant yearn to look good irrespective of the socio-economic status; the skill of a stylist is always in constant demand. Assisted by globalization and a growing private sector investment, a huge opportunity exists in the hair designing industry for individuals seeking income generating opportunities as well as governments and corporate organizations looking for avenues to empower the citizenry with vocational self-sustaining education.
A CSR PLATFORM FOR NATURES GENTLE TOUCH
Setting the pace with this community empowerment opportunity is Natures Gentle Touch who has instituted an empowerment scholarship to indigent Nigerians as its corporate social responsibility to the society. The scholarship which is being administered through the institute has so far been awarded to 12 beneficiaries. The recipients are undertaking a free 9-months course in hair designing at the institute which will provide them with the theoretical knowledge and practical skills to establish financial sustenance in the lucrative beauty and personal style
industry.
PROSPECTIVE PARTNERSHIP
The institute is also willing to partner with organizations and agencies that share similar ideal in impacting on the society through empowering the citizenry with professional vocational education such as hair designing skills by opening its doors towards assisting them to promote their corporate social responsibility and achieve this goal.
TESTIMONIALS FROM THE STUDENTS
Some of the students at the institute who are mostly fresh graduates, working class ladies or practicing stylists seeking to up-skill their worth also acknowledged the potentials that the institute has exposed them to. One of the student’s who is waiting to start her Master’s program in a British university remarked that the skill is going to assist her get a part-time job when she starts schooling. She acknowledged the professionalism with which the institute is established and the impact that the education will have in improving the economic potentials of hair stylists.
Since the institute was established, it has graduated over 200 students, some of whom have gone ahead to start off lucrative careers as a professional stylists.
The Natures Gentle Touch Hair Institute is located at plot 305A, Jide Oki Street, Victoria Island, and more enquiries about the institute can be emailed to info@naturesgentletouchinstitute.com