Stay Updated with our Impact Stories
Subscribe to our newsletter to receive updates on our programs, community stories, and the impact your support is making.
Enatta Boat Regatta
Boat Regatta (Social Cohesion)
Program Overview
The Boat Regatta is Enatta Foundation’s annual community gathering that celebrates collective progress and reinforces trust across fishing communities.
Development work is often transactional: deliver an intervention, measure an outcome, move forward. But sustainable change requires something less tangible and more enduring. It requires relationships built on trust, communities that hold themselves accountable to shared goals, and public recognition of contributions that often go unnoticed. The Boat Regatta creates space for all of this.
It is a deliberate investment in social cohesion and shared identity.
The Challenge
Fisherwomen across Lagos’ coastal communities often share unsafe boats or rent from private owners, losing up to 40 percent of their daily catch to rental fees. Limited access to credit and productive assets keeps women trapped in low-income cycles and exposes them to safety risks on the water.
Why the Programme Exists
Strong community ties are essential for cooperative systems and collective accountability. Yet many development interventions overlook the social fabric that sustains economic initiatives.
Women manage shared boats because they trust one another to honor agreements. Cooperatives function because members believe their peers will contribute fairly to maintenance and follow usage schedules. But trust does not emerge automatically; it must be nurtured through transparent processes and moments of collective celebration.
The Boat Regatta exists to strengthen that fabric by creating space for recognition, dialogue, and community pride.
What the Programme Does
The event brings together fisherwomen, community leaders, government representatives, and partners to celebrate achievements and reaffirm shared goals. The event is a space where economic success is recognized not just as individual achievement but as proof of what collective action can accomplish.
It highlights women’s contributions to local economies and creates public accountability around Enatta Foundation’s work.
Who It Serves
The Regatta serves all programme beneficiaries and their wider communities, fostering inclusion beyond direct participants.
Outcomes and Long-Term Impact
Under the Livelihood Empowerment pillar, the Boat Project:
- Strengthened trust among beneficiaries and community leaders
- Increased visibility of women's economic contributions
- Reinforced cooperative relationships and shared responsibility
- Greater community ownership of Enatta Foundation's work
- Sustained social capital that supports programme success