WOMEN & YOUTH EMPOWERMENT IN NIGERIA PDF Print E-mail

Vital Aid foundation has extended her hand to work in Africa and in mainly Nigeria, Kenya and Tanzania. The passion of working with Africans in the diaspora is the motivation with which the foundation has moved to operate beyond boundaries to join in the efforts of making poverty history in Africa.
With this in mind, we realise that for a long time the problems of poverty and disease have seemed to be persistent and with no sign of reducing. V.A.F has joined this challenge to eradicate or alleviate these problems in collaboration with all relevant parties. This includes the financial sector, whose activities play important role in supporting the issues of Africa’s development. The civic society as well has had a major role in participation, and implementation of the development programs. As part of this awakening call, V.A.F in order to deal with these problems is now focusing on women and youth in sensitisation through workshops and training sessions in Africa. We strongly believe that the participation and partnership of women and youth in our programs is playing an important role in achieving the millennium development goals by 2015.

The important issue in our sensitisation programs with women and youth involve orientation in the participation in governance and community affairs, awareness of the ills of domestic violence and trafficking in young women and girls. In all these activities, poverty takes the centre stage and V.A.F believes that its reduction is the beginning of empowerment in AFRICA. To reach a wider audience, V.A.F incorporates the use of media in public awareness and campaign in the reduction of poverty and involvement of women and youth. For convenience of implementation, the programme is divided into two, one specifically focuses on the youth and the other on the women.

Youth Involvement

 Image

The youth program is being implemented through workshops organized for social workers, political leaders and adolescent pupils in the region. Participants are taught communication and media skills apart from objective steps they can take to negotiate and position themselves properly in relationships that expose them to risk of HIV/AID and the abuse of illicit drugs.

Engineer Martin Onyekachi (regional director of VAF) addressing the youth during one of the vital aid activities held in the community.


 

 

 Image
“Involvement of the youth in the project decision-making processes has been very instrumental in designing components that directly seek to address the issues of the youth positively. Taking full consideration of the needs of the youth, the project coordinator have youths directly represented in consultation with the various organs of youth leadership in the community.”

 
Women Empowerment Campaign

Image
Ms. Marilyn Marthins inspecting the proposed site for women empowerment center in the community.

The second part of the program integrates the public enlightenment to empower women in their various communities (Umuanuma Autonomous Community). Women from all walks of life are encouraged to participate in this program. Highly placed women inside and outside the community, intellectuals and ordinary rural women participate in the workshops where activities and constructive social, economic and political tools are developed and impacted to participants.

The women participants learn skills that facilitate their participation in political leadership, ways and means for averting or positively responding to domestic violence against women, media and communication skills to improve living standards through.

 Information and Communication Technology (ICT). Moreover, women are encouraged to engage more actively in the general elections in Nigeria, and to support fellow women interested in politics so as to engender support for the promotion of the rights and welfare of women and children.
 
[ Back ]