Issues we Address
Capacity Building Trainings in Support of Intervention Initiatives
The Foundation considers capacity building as a strategic pre-interventions activity to guarantee program effectiveness and sustainability. Capacity building situates within the Organizational Development Initiative (ODI) of the Foundation and has applied this both to Foundation staff and relevant program personnel, Resource Persons and institutional partners. Below are some of the most important programs the Foundation has embarked on under this thematic area.
The project field the Foundation selected for the implementation of the Culture and Health Africa Program – Okon community – is a rural setting and a hundred kilometers away from the nearest mission hospital. Consequently, the community records many deaths as a result of common and treatable diseases. It also has a very high infant and maternal mortality. Our research team noticed that Traditional Birth Attendants were highly in demand as desirable number of children per women averages 5-6 children.
It became imperative that the capacity of TBAs in the community be strengthened. The Foundation with support from the Program for Appropriate Technology in Health and funding from the Ford Foundation in collaboration with Akwa Ibom State Ministry of Health trained community based TBAs. 38 TBAs applied for participation only 22 were selected to participate in the training due to limited resources. The TBAs were trained on:
Enhancing Maternal Health in Okon Community: A case for training Traditional Birth Attendants in modern techniques of delivery and Family Planning, Prevention of Mother – To – Child Transmissions of HIV/AIDS.
The training lasted for three weeks. Trainees participate in a graduation ceremony and were awarded with certificate of participation presented to them by the State Commissioner for Health on behalf of the State Government.
The Foundation’s intervention on Widowhood and Wife Inheritance was a comprehensive initiative that required sustainability. In achieving this, a major challenge was on how to evolve a cadre of indigenous professionals that could be able to implement the Sustainable Development Framework of the initiative within a program circle of 5 - years.
To address this challenge, 25 indigenous professionals – school teachers, local administrators in hospitals and small scale enterprises, church workers, students on vacations etc were recruited and trained on the following modules:
- Module 1- Development Organizations (Classification)
- Module 2 – Program Design and Management
- Module 3 – Managing Project Funds
- Module 4 – Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E)
- Module 5 – Program Sustainability
After the training, participants were able to oversee the implementation of the Network programs such as:
- Micro Credit Program for Widows (MICPOW).
- Skills Acquisition Program for Orphans (SAPO).
- Education Assistance Program for Orphans (EAPO).
- Impact Mitigation of HIV/AIDS Affected.
- Voluntary and Confidential Counseling and Testing (VCCT) for Affected/ Infected.
The volunteers remain available to support the initiatives in the future on a sustainable manner.
3. Sustainable Livelihoods Interventions of the Foundation
Over the years, the Foundation has implemented a number of programs to support sustainable livelihoods targeting highly vulnerable groups particularly the very poor. These programs were designed to address extreme poverty in rural communities in the Niger Delta region. Highly vulnerable groups such as orphans, widows, vulnerable children and out – of - school youth were direct beneficiaries of these interventions. Some of the sustainable livelihoods programs are discussed below:
- Skills Acquisition Program
The Foundation implemented a skills acquisition program for orphans of Okon Widows Network. This program tagged “Skills Acquisition Program for Orphans (SAPO)” was designed to create an opportunity for meaningful economic engagements of the youth most of whom were school drop – outs, due in part, to the deaths of either or both of the parents. The program also aims to reduce child trafficking in the area given that the International Labor Organization (ILO) had identified the area to have the highest prevalence of trafficking in children.
At the end of the inauguration of the Network, over 2000 Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVC) were mobilized and registered with the Network. A team drawn from the volunteers was established to manage the skills acquisition program. Due to limited funds, only 200 Orphans were selected to participate in the program. They were counseled along with their guidance to gauge available knowledge level, preferred trades etc. Thereafter the participants were posted to different service providers – Tailoring shops, Barbing saloons, Hairdressing saloons, Computer technicians, Motor mechanics, Refrigerator/Air-condition technicians, Carpentry shops etc.
These orphans were trained for a total of 18 months. During this period, the Program Team planned a monitoring program to track the skills transfer process using customized questionnaires. At the end of the training, participants were presented with certificate of participation and starter packs, including Micro credit to establish their own shops.
- Enterprise Development Program
In response to Youth restiveness and militancy in the Niger Delta, ELF Petroleum Nigeria Ltd invited the Foundation to implement a Small Business Development Initiative (SBDI) for youth of the oil producing communities. 18 beneficiaries were selected for the program and participated in a 3 – month training program. Initial capacity mapping prior to commencement of training indicated that the youth had some entrepreneurial initiatives and were lacking in capital to embark on investments.
Participants were interested in diverse trades including: bakery, soft drink retail, cable television marketing, ice cream franchise, shoe shops, electronic shops, furniture, warehouse, motorcycle repair shops etc. Each beneficiary was given a maximum of NGN 750,000 interest free loans to support each enterprise.
The Foundation program staff initiated process monitoring to track not only application of funds, but expansion of the enterprises. As would be shown in the impact, participants were able to successfully establish their businesses as well as develop strategic market links.
- Micro Credit Program
The Foundation considers Micro Credit program as a strategic intervention within the thematic area of our sustainable livelihoods initiative. Following this, Micro credit program was implemented in two most important project fields to three strategic target groups – Widows, Orphans and restive youth of the Niger Delta region.
Micro Credit Program for Widows (MICPOW)
400 widows, part of the 1000 registered with Okon Widows Network were grouped into six co-operative societies and were trained on different trades based on findings from an initial baseline studies. These co-operative societies appointed their leaders – President, Secretaries, Treasurers and were provided with a maximum of NGN 200,000 per co-operative. The co-operative societies were made to have sub – autonomy and each of them were registered with the Network’s secretariat with the sum of NGN 5,000. This did not only assist the Network in fundraising but demonstrated commitment from the members who were then able to draw from the Network MICPOW funds.
Members of each co-operative balloted to determine the first set among the members that could access loans from the NGN 200,000 given to each co-operative, while the second set waited for the first set to refund before taking their turns to access the loans. Over 50% of the widows were those affected by HIV/AIDS. Consequently, MICPOW was, in part, to mitigate the impact of HIV/AIDS. Some of the trades preferred by the widows include petty trading, tailoring, palm oil processing, cassava processing, farming, hairdressing etc. Beneficiaries were supported with life skills education comprising petty cash record keeping, income and expenditure, profit and loss. Additionally, MICPOW managers created a tracking monitor for each co-operative society to keep track of fund application and income re-distribution within each co-operative.
Funding for MICPOW was provided by our Foundation for the pilot phase, while the World Bank National AIDS Response Fund (NARF) managed by the National Agency for the Control of AIDS (NACA) and Pathfinder International/Nigeria funded the second phase.
Apparently noticing the efficiency and thoroughness of the Foundation’s initiatives as well as credibility in working with several institutions in the Niger Delta, Elf Petroleum Nigeria Limited, EPNL, invited the Foundation to operationalize it’s partnership with other stakeholders for the implementation of the Total Credit for Agriculture and Rural Development, TOTALCARD, under the Niger Delta Trust Fund (NDTF). The NDTF is a sustainable development initiative designed to deal with the twin evils of youth restiveness and youth unemployment in the Niger Delta region. Key partners for this initiative are Elf Petroleum Nigeria Limited, Development Finance Office of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the United Bank for Africa (UBA). The Foundation served as the PMO (Project Managing Organization) responsible for the utilization of the fund’s vote of N500 million per annum for a project period of three years to ensure that youth were trained in skills acquisition, women and youth cooperative societies were trained on small business development prior to accessing Micro Credit facilities for meaningful economic engagements.
4. Harmful Traditional Practices (HTPs)
- Widowhood and Wife Inheritance
In 2002, the Washington DC based Program for Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH) initiated a continent wide “Culture and Health Africa Program” (CHAP), designed to discourage harmful cultural practices and promote positives ones with funding from the New York office of the Ford Foundation. PATH’s project was a pilot implemented in strategically selected African countries including Nigeria, Egypt and Kenya. In Nigeria, the Foundation worked on “Widowhood and Wife Inheritance” and the project field was Okon community in northern Akwa Ibom State, Niger-Delta region of Nigeria. As usual with the Foundation’s programs approach, an extensive baseline research was conducted for a comprehensive identification of developmental problematics in the region. Findings identified high prevalence rate of child trafficking and slave labor, problems related to widowhood and wife inheritance as well as property inheritance, stigmatization/ rejection of twin births, sexuality behaviors of migrant oil workers resulting in high rates of teenage pregnancies and HIV/AIDS, linkage between gender based poverty and the vulnerability of women to harmful traditional practices in response to pressure for survival, high rates of Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVC), increasing number of school drop outs and street children etc. On the basis of these findings, extensive consultations were carried out with organizations such as UNDP, UNICEF, Pathfinder International, State project offices of the National Action Committee on AIDS working with funding from the World Bank’s National response fund, the Federal Government of Nigeria/European Union Micro Projects Program (MPP6) for Niger Delta, Ministries of Women Affairs, oil corporations etc.
The aim of these consultations was to enable these strategic stakeholders share in the research data, encourage them to partner in the project and facilitate a multisectoral and coordinated interventions for maximum impact and sustainability. This paid off. The UNDP initiated agricultural development project with the Widows Network that emerged from the project, UNICEF initiated WES (Water and Environmental Sanitation) project, Pathfinder International Nigeria, sourced funding for organizational development from Ford foundation to train community volunteers (22 in number, men and women) for the project, FGN/EU MPP6 initiated community construction program and in the course of it renovated a market and trained youth on construction work, the World bank funded HIV/AIDS impact mitigation project through micro credit scheme implemented by the community volunteers with technical assistance from the Foundation.
The PATH supported, Ford Foundation funded project on Widowhood and Wife inheritance enabled MPF to mobilize almost 1000 widows into an organization called Okon Widows Network (OWN) as well as registered over 2000 orphans with the Network. It also provided an opportunity for the building of capacity of traditional rulers to deal with culture related issues in their community as well as capacity building training for community volunteers and youth. Apart from providing project deliverables to PATH regional office in Kenya, MPF documented the project activities and outcomes in a copyrighted publication and CD documentary for use by organizations opting to work on the sensitive issues of culture. This, most probably explains, why PATH’s regional coordinator for Africa, Mrs. RIKKA TRANSGRUD described MPF’s project outcomes as “the most fantastic and the best in the 3 pilot countries in Africa.”
- Stigmatization of Twin Births
Having gathered required experiences working on culture related issues, the Foundation provided technical assistance to Development Communication Center (DCC) a Community Based Organization in a neighboring area to the Foundation’s project field in northern Akwa Ibom State in 2003 to work on using folk media (through entertainment education) to address cultural issues related to stigmatization of twin or multiple births in Odoro Ikot community, northern Akwa Ibom State, supported by PATH with funding from the Ford Foundation.
In spite of extensive liberalization culminating from proliferating educational opportunities, expanding urbanization, Christianization and development, our research findings reveals that most part of Niger Delta are still locked in the dark corner of Nigeria history.
Among some groups in the Niger Delta, twin mothers and children are still viewed as re-incarnation of evil spirits, punishment from the gods to unholy couples etc which has a bad omen for the community with negative implications for farming, harvest, war etc.
Consequently, twin fathers are compelled to offer costly sacrifices to appease the gods for purification and re-absorption into the mainstream community life. Unfortunately, twin mothers do not have similar privilege; hence they live in perpetual stigmatization till death. This discovery has triggered fresh culture and gender programming to address harmful cultural practices in the area.
