What are you doing or what can you do? Development Impact for Nigeria, Diaspora Workshop, 14 May 2009, London

On Thursday 14 May, over 25people interested in development awareness issues in Nigeria, mostly Nigerian Diaspora, gathered to hear about the work of Development Impact for Nigeria (DIFN) and its main partner, Ipaja Community Link (ICL). Ade Fashade, General Secretary and Trustee of DIFN, said "The presence at the event was very encouraging to us all at DIFN and ICL. DIFN is determined to continue to support the great work going on in Nigeria in making a difference in society. Although the bulk of the work is concentrated in one small, deprived local area of Lagos, the work could, and has, begun to be a template for further development, poverty eradication and skills empowerment work in other areas of Lagos and beyond. To continue to sustain this, your help, both financial and in kind, will continue to be most valuable to our work."

As the international volunteer with ICL, I shared what we work we have been doing in Ipaja - from empowering women and training teachers and youth volunteers, to supporting orphans and vulnerable children and people living with HIV and HIVS. The work of ICL is far-reaching. With more assistance, we could do even more. In partnership with VSO, DIFN would like to recruit individuals from the Diaspora in the UK to volunteer on 3-6 week placements in Nigeria, as either teacher trainers or community development professionals. This is an amazing opportunity to make an impact to the development of Nigeria at grass-roots level in both Lagos and Adamawa.

For more information about the VSO/DIFN Diaspora volunteering initiative, how to subscribe to our regular emails and newsletters, or to make a donation to our vital work, please contact Ade, in the UK, at difn.uk@googlemail.com, or Yomi, in Nigeria, on icl@difn.org.uk. Please do not forget us - your support and commitment will be most appreciated! As Ade says, the impact of the work of ICL in Lagos is just the start - let's work together to achieve much much more.

Youth volunteers and staff help to renovate ICL's new Youth and Community Resource Centre...

In April, ICL acquired a new office in Akinyele, Ipaja, in addition to the current office in Baruwa, Ipaja. Our main funders, Christian Aid, were able to secure the payment of the rent for a much-needed Youth and Community Resource Centre in Ipaja. Over the last few weeks, volunteers and staff have been working tirelessly to clean and paint the office before some of the staff can relocate here in May. This new office will become the hub for our youth, community and Diaspora volunteering initiatives, community health education work and our growing orphans and vulnerable children programme. Once the office is fully furnished, we hope that this will serve as a 'drop-in' centre for young people in the area. But can you help? Do you have spare computers to donate to the Resource Centre? Do you have any spare materials or books to develop our Library? We really need additional assistance to make sure this new office is a great success. If you have anything to donate, please contact Yomi on +2347029698523, Mercy on +2347069743615 or Jennifer on +2347056369269 or email icl@difn.org.uk. We look forward to hearing from you soon!

Ipaja Community Link and NYSC - an exciting new partnership!

Back in March, Yomi, Coordinator of Ipaja Community Link (ICL), Tonye, one of our dedicated youth volunteers, and Timothy and Jennifer, Youth Volunteer Coordinators, visited the NYSC camp in Iyana Ipaja, Lagos, to talk about the work of ICL in Lagos and the many benefits of volunteering. National Youth Service Corp (NYSC) is a mandatory one-year of service that all graduates in Nigeria, under the age of 30, have to complete. Usually corpers are placed in a different state to their state of origin and each year there are hundreds of thousands of corpers who complete this service. VSO and NYSC already have a partnership with the Corper Plus programme in Nasarawa and Kwara. There is more information aboutr NYSC here: www.nysc.gov.ng. As part of the NYSC placement, corpers are encouraged to volunteer as part of the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) project. During camp, interested volunteers signed up to be part of a five-day intensive training programme around the MDGs and how they can actively become involved in their host community. I spoke to them about how ICL are working hard to meet all of the MDGs, even if this is in a small way, in a local community on the ground. Following this sensitisation session, ICL are now engaging corpers, who are based in and around our local government area, as volunteers with our community-based work on their once-a-week community development (CD) day. One corper, Dipo Ogunfeibo, aged 27, is regularly volunteering to assist at the local mother and baby immunisation clinic in Akinyele, Ipaja. Dipo told us that he is passionate about community development and has been challenged by the commitment of ICL staff and youth volunteers to do more in his community. The immunisation clinic, which exists to reduce child mortality and is synonymous with millennium development goal four, enables Dipo to have an impact in the local community by assisting with the registration of mothers and babies, handing out needles for injections and weighing babies. Dipo studied Eduation at Ile-Ife University, Nigeria, and is a Development Knowledge Facilitator on the MDGs, so he regularly talks to pupils in schools about poverty and development. He believes that peer education is key for young people - "if we plant these ideas in the minds of young people at an early age, they will tell their parents, brothers, sisters and friends about development, and hopefully become actively engaged with the issues as they grow older." Dipo is planning to provide some additional training for ICL staff and volunteers around the MDGs.

Ipaja Community Link facilitates basic health education training for teachers and volunteers in Ipaja

This week, on 1 - 2 April, Ipaja Community Link facilitated a two-day workshop for public primary and secondary school teachers and ICL youth volunteers on the Child-to-Child Health Education Programme at St Andrews Anglican Pimary School in Ipaja. The Child-to-Child approach is an educational process that links children’s learning with taking action to promote the health, wellbeing and development of themselves, their families and their communities. Through participating in Child-to-Child activities the personal, physical, social, emotional, moral and intellectual development of children is enhanced. Teachers and volunteers learnt how to convey messages about basic health issues to children, such as how to treat diarrhoea, malaria, worm infections, the importance of brushing teeth, washing bodies and boiling water. They then demonstrated methods of how to step-down their training in classes, through role plays, songs, poems and dances in both English and the local language, Yoruba.

On the second day, the 26 teachers from 16 schools and 4 youth volunteers spent time putting together action plans about how to implement their training. Ipaja Community Link will provide support to the schools by providing resources such as information packs, posters, and stationary, youth volunteers who will assist the teachers in schools and also find avenues for sustainability of the Child-to-Child programme. Confidence, Ipaja Community Link's new Community Health Worker, will work closely with Mercy, the Assistant Coordinator, on implementing this programme.

For more information about the Child-to-Child Programme, please visit www.child-to-child.org.

What is at the heart of volunteerism in Nigeria? VSO National Volunteering training, Abuja, March 2009

According to the latest national volunteering posters which Yomi and I received when we attended a VSO training course in Abuja last week, "At the heart of volunteerism are the ideals of service and solidarity and the belief that together we can make the world better." Ipaja Community Link are working to support the national volunteering programme by strenghtening opportunities for youths to engage in volunteering activities for social development in line with NEEDS (Nigeria Economic Empowerment Development Strategy for poverty alleviation) and by creating awareness and increasing the profile of volunteerism. Two staff from VSO, Kayode and Abdul, visited Ipaja Community Link at the beginning of March to meet with volunteers and staff to review our national volunteering programme in Ipaja. Our volunteers told Kayode and Abdul that they had experienced many benefits from their volunteering activities with the mother and baby clinic, the elderly, orphans and vulnerable children and with each other during the youth volunteer programme weekly meetings, such as increased self-confidence, making new friends and being involved in social activities and a sense of achieving something useful and making an impact on the community. The organisations that our volunteers spend their time with said that they had inspired staff with the spirit of service, provided extra support to fill skill gaps and improved the relationship between young people and others in the community. The national volunteering programme with VSO sees volunteers as one of the key ways to deliver its development agenda in local communities. Between April 2008 and March 2009, the VSO national volunteering programme in Nigeria placed over 2,500 volunteers throughout the country.

With the support of VSO and Ipaja Community Link's international volunteer, Jennifer, and alongside Timothy, the Youth Volunteer Coordinator, we are looking to provide volunteers with a high-quality volunteering experience that changes a person's life. There is also a network of international volunteers across Nigeria from the UK, United States and Netherlands, with 5 of these based in Lagos, and so through the sharing of experiences, contacts and learnings, we can drive forward the national volunteering programme to alleviate poverty in Nigeria. In Ipaja there is only a certain amount that 8 paid staff can do in the community, but our youth volunteers are able to reach more people through volunteering with local community organisations and meeting with, caring for and assisting others in the community. Volunteering is now seen as a must-have building block of communities and civil society.

A busy Friday and Saturday in Ipaja!

Friday 13 March was Red Nose Day in the UK - a day when people come together to raise funds for projects in Africa. As a volunteer from the UK, I decided that I would see what I could do to bring the Red Nose Day spirit to Ipaja. We were recently given N20,000 (£100) towards the work of Ipaja Community Link and therefore along with our youth volunteers, we decided to use this money to buy Red Nose Day gifts for some of the other local NGOs that we work closely with. We bought rice and tinned tomatoes for the elders of Agency for the Aged and donated money to Ipaja Community Health Foundation for immunisations, syringes and other supplies for their twice-weekly mother and baby clinic. All the gifts were received with much surprise and even more gratitude. The remaining money will be used towards our work with children and young people. We are also hoping that more money will come to Ipaja Community Link through Development Impact for Nigeria and our recent fundraising efforts with the Diaspora in the UK, along with friends, family and other contacts.

On Saturday morning, we ran our programme for orphans and vulnerable children in the Ipaja Community Link office. The programme was re-launched last week for children who have lost either one or both of their parents. The children gather to socialise with each other, play games and to also learn - there is time for reading and for literacy and maths lessons run by one of the youth volunteers - and they receive nutritional support at the end of the meeting with food packs to take home. The programme receives N10,000 (£40) per month support from our funding. This money has been instrumental in setting up the support group, however, as the programme expands, this leaves around just N100 (45p) per child per Saturday if there are 25 children attending. Therefore, we are seeking additional funding from within and from outside Nigeria to support this vital work.

On Saturday afternoon, Yomi and I met with the Rotary Club of Gowon Estate, Ipaja, to talk about Ipaja Community Link and how we can work together on some of our projects. I had met with the Rotarian's of Birmingham before I came to Nigeria to seek support for VSO as part of my fundraising, so I was interested in finding out if there was a local Rotary Club which could support Ipaja Community Link. Rotary is a global network of individuals and community volunteers with over 1.2 million Rotarian's worldwide in 168 countries. Rotary International has 4 main areas of emphasis:
1) Literacy and Education
2) Health and Poverty Alleviation
3) Family of Rotary
4) Water Management
The Rotary Club of Gowon Estate have been providing assistance to community development projects in Ipaja since 1994. They are now excited about the prospect of working closely with Ipaja Community Link - a successful organisation on the ground with existing links with other NGOs in the area and fully functioning programmes. As the President Benedict Osilamah Okhumale said, "We can be sure that we're now both paddling in the same direction!" The main object of Rotary is to encourage and foster the ideal of service and to help the less privileged - together, with Ipaja Community Link, both organisations can now reach more people in Ipaja. We will start with the Baruwa Community Primary School project by working with community leaders to install toilets and a bore-hole and then build our new relationship from there...

Online newsletter, March 2009

Reflections of a returnee: Yomi Oloko, Coodinator
Last year February, I took the decision to relocate to Nigeria from the UK with a view to coordinate a small community-based organisation on the outskirts of Lagos called Ipaja Community Link. Ipaja Community Link was the main Nigeria partner of a UK-based/Nigerian-run development organisation called Development Impact For Nigeria (DIFN, see www.difn.org.uk). At the time Ipaja Community Link had very little funding, very low project development and a low staff morale. The previous coordinator had died suddenly some months back. I had actually came with the view to inform the staff team that we may have to close the project down. However, a year plus things are definitely looking brighter. But there is still much more to do and in order to do this, DIFN in the UK and Ipaja Community Link want to develop partnerships with Nigerians in the Diaspora. The motto of DIFN is "Doing Nothing Is Not An Option" and as we move towards 2015 DIFN wants to partner with Ipaja Community Link to endeavour to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). MDG 8 is Developing Global Partnerships and one partnership DIFN is keen to develop is that with the Nigeria Diaspora in the UK and other interested individuals or groups in the UK interested in Nigeria-focused development.

So, what can you do?If you'd like to get in touch, give us a shout at info@difn.org.uk. If you'd like to send us some funds please write a cheque to "Development Impact For Nigeria" and post to DIFN's Secretary, Ade Fashade at 84 Springfield House, 5 Tyson Street, London, E8 2LY or to pay by direct debit or bank transfer, email Ade at difn.uk@googlemail.com and he will contact you personally and provide you with the details. Or, if you are based in Nigeria and just want to help contact me on yomi@difn.org.uk or phone me on 0702 969 8523.

How ICL empowers the community through skills acquisition: Ojo Oluwabusola Atinuke, Enterprise and Cooperative Development Worker
The skills acquisition programme is all about mobilising, giving skills and empowering women, unemployed graduates and youth in the community with different types of skills. Presently, we are focusing on: basic sewing/dress-making, bead and bag-making and baking/snack-making. The programme started last year with 24 trainees divided into three classes. During the course of the training, we also organised an enterprise workshop which took place once a month where we taught the trainees how they could be a successful entrepreneurs and manage their own businesses. After five months of training, the first set of trainees graduated on 27 February 2009. In this great ceremony, many dignitaries were present, such as a representative from Ayobo/Ipaja Local Government, the Coordinator of Agency for the Aged, the Baale of Baruwa and a representative from UBA Bank of Nigeria. The training and the graduation ceremony has, without a doubt, impacted the lives of the trainees.

Supporting people living with HIV/AIDs (PLWHA) and orphans and vulnerable children (OVC): Mercy Maxwell-Gii, Assistant Coordinator
ICL sponsors a support group for persons living with and affected by HIV and a support programme for children who have lost one or both parents in death and for children whose parents are living with HIV/AIDs.

The objective of the PLWHA support group is to improve the quality of life of people living with and affected by HIV/AIDs and to help them rediscover themselves. Activities include, the provision of psychosocial support, counselling services, referal and follow-up services, drug adherence support, home-based care, training on HIV and key issues relating to HIV/AIDs and nutritional support in the form of meals and other food stuffs. Members of the support group are also encouraged to sign-up for the skills acquisition training programme. The support group holds every third Saturday of the month between 12 noon and 2pm. Presently, the support group has 12 members of which 2 are female and 2 are male.

Last Saturday, 7 March, ICL relaunched its programme for orphans and vulnerable children. The objective of the OVC support group is to reintegrate children back into the community and give them a sense of belonging. Current activities include, psychosocial support, educational support in the form of assistance with school fees, provision of school uniform, school books and enrollment of children into local public primary and secondary schools, provision of literacy training and nutritional support. Presently, the group is made up of 18 children.

ICL always needs extra financial support for these programmes. We want to reach out to as many people in the community who are vulnerable and are only able to do this if we get extra support. If you are able to donate financially, or through the donation of clothes or food items, please get in touch.

7 is an unlucky number. Can you help Baruwa's Primary School this Red Nose Day? Jennifer Byram, VSO volunteer
On Friday 13 March, people in the UK gather to raise awareness and funds for people living in poverty in Africa. 11 Red Nose Days have so far raised £420 million. ICL is working in a community in Africa to give the chance for people living in poverty to change their lives. Baruwa Community Primary School has 700 pupils, 7 teachers and 7 classrooms. You can do the maths. The school has no toilet and no safe drinking water. ICL is working with teachers, parents and community leaders to raise the awareness of the challenges faced at the school and raise funds to facilitate the installation of toilets and a bore-hole.

But we need your help. Please think about donating this Red Nose Day - it's easy, if you're in the UK, just put a cheque in the post payable to DIFN and post it to Ade Fashade at 84 Springfield House, 5 Tyson Street, London, E8 2LY; or, if you're in Nigeria, call Yomi on 0702 969 8523 to arrange a transfer. Many of these children are part of the OVC support programme and ICL want to do all that we can to make their lives better.