Nigeria: December 2007

Phillips Elisha, Nigeria Director
Village Care International
December 4, 2007

The following is the report for each community.

1. Tungan Magajiya

Very little is done here and there appears to be some crises with the committee members and Nuhu. Some of the committee members belong to a different political party from that of Nuhu and they allowed their differences to weave through this. They always disagree unnecessarily. Hakumi and i will be meeting next week to find how we could sort the issues out. We may at the suggession of the community come up with fresh leaders. Time will reveal this.

2. Amanawa.

This community is doing well. There is ofcouse a drop down in the initial zeal, but they are still helping a few orphans and widows numbering about 10. This help is not as comprehensive as helping in all the 20 indicators but some amount of help is rendered anyway. We have just completed the re training of this community and about 50 people turned out for the training. They both renewed their comitment to start all over. They are also helping in giving out soft loans, not cash to boost the economic security of families to take care of their own.

3. Sokoto,

Still keys into helping make families economically secure. The few families also key into helping each other by giving scholarship to their children and basically on the need to keep the homes clean.

4. Gidan Zalla.

Helping out in making sure children succeed in school by paying school fees and providing school supplies. They are helping in no less than 9 children in the community. The community is makin effort to keep their environment clean.

5. Billiri, Poshiya,

Most of the orphaned children and widows are actually being taken care of here. There is a marked reception to the need to help not just the ophans and widows here but even those in dire need. Over 20 children are registered and all these are helped in some way or other to make them responsible members of the community. The help may not be comprehensive enough but help is being giving anyway. Similarly projects such as drilling of wells are done here including helping to keep clean the already existing ones. Again, families are helped and youths encouraged to run some petty bussineses to raise the economy of the families and to keep them away from being idle. Ofcourse the community is also being kept clean by regular sanitation programs. Homes too.

6. Kagini, Kaba, Guidna, Tungan Wakili, Bagusa,

These communities can actually be said to be in the initial phase of VC development. The first training conducted last year saw only 1 or 2 of them attending in a central place. The training we had two weeks ago appears to be a fresh training for all of them. In the open space, they made a commitment to helping the orphans and the widows, cultivate fruits to boost their nutrition, sanitize their environment which is in a terrible mess, dig latrines and wells and own their schools and boost adult education which will help the parents know how to implement VC programs, they also will generate funds by themselves to boost the economic status of their homes there by empowering the weaker families. Individuals have also offered scholarships to children whose parents are not able to pay school fees or the orphans. Time will let us know how well they are doing this.

7. Kaduna and Mangu,

These are fresh communities to be trained. The training for the Mangu community comes up next week. We are still working to fix a date for the Kaduna training which we hope will come up this month

Nigeria Update: October 2007

Phillips Elisha, Nigeria Director

Village Care International

October 22, 2007

Just so many things on my mind.

1. The re - trainings is on going, hope to finish by 2nd week of December.

2. I have conducted a survey on 2 communities for possible VC presence. The trainings for these communities comes up in December. The communities are called Bwonpe in Plateau state and Kakura in the suburb of Kaduna, Kaduna state. The total number expected for these 2 trainings is 500.

3. I now have the first English Outcomes and Practices booklet printed in Ngeria. I have sent copies to David to help check the quality. Please let me know if it is ok. As far as am concerned they are excellent but i am not a professional here.
4. The entire training materials i have, about 1300 copies may not be enough for the trainings and the re trainings. We need to urgently produce more.

5. The Hausa Outcomes and Practices booklets are ready for printing. This would be better than the English copies. But the point is if we have to have them printed we must swing into action now. I am working with the printer on the cost because the number of pages for the Hausa material are more than the English copies

6. If teams are coming from January, then we have to start making arrangement for the bus.

7. Warware Note! I have concluded making contacts for Niger and Cameroun as you have asked me to do. We need initial visits to these places as a survey trip.

8. The VCI registration process is on. Because of so many things to handle i have asked Lucky Simon to coordinate that.

9. DAVID NOTE, others too. While in Kaduna ( Kaduna is the largest city in Northern Nigeria after Kano and this is where the worst of religious crises took place. Hopefully VCI programs will bring genuine reconciliation. I am optimistic ), i have talked to a few church leaders on VCI program and they welcome the program so much that they asked me to invite you to lend your voice. They have a program in October of each year. So its either you come next week for the program or wait till next year. At this program over 200 churches will come together with over 7000 people. It is because of this discussion that we are going to have one of the trainings at Kakura ( see item 2 above ). Hopefully this result into many trainings next year. I have slated you to speak to the churches for next year, since you are only returning to US today. This will blow VCI up in the entire country. I hope i am not too fast. Someone gotta stop me!
Let me beg to stop here, but i have more, as soon as i get other ideas worked out, i will get this across to you.

Thanks,
Phillips

Nigeria: October 2007

Phillips Elisha, Nigeria Director
Village Care International
October 22, 2007

1. Tungan Magajiya:
The training has been conducted by the Davids sometime last year. The program right now is focused on sanitation, nutrition and helping children be in school. This is the first village care village in Nigeria but the growth here is slow. They have also started a library with the hope of creating a reading culture among the children. We are going to have a re-training of this community next month.

2. Amanawa.
The training has been conducted here in December last year. A few programs are going on. (a) Classes are going on both for adults and children. For adults it is targeted for those who never went to school. This program helps them to acquire literacy so as to be informed on ways they could help their families. (b) the nutrition group has made a vegetable garden to cater for the nutritional needs of their community. (c) The economic security group has started up small scale businesses for individuals so as to help them help members of their families. (d) The educational committee provides scholarship for children and youths who could not go to school for lack of scholarship (e) The sanitation group are all over keeping the village environment clean. (f) Trees are planted to provide the nutritional demands of the village. (g) 20 children are registered and efforts are being made to help these children.

3. Gidan Zalla;
The training has also been conducted here. There appears to be a community wide acceptance of VC program. Children are being helped to succeed in school by providing educational materials and scholarships. The sanitation group is perhaps the best group as this is what causes awareness to the village. It is what brought the whole village together, Muslim and Christian alike. David witnessed most of these.

4. Billiri ( Poshiya);
Training here has been conducted too. There appears to be a fast reception of all the programs. Orphans and widows are being helped especially those who are HIV positive. Classes are being organized for those who are not literate and for those children and youths to augment for deficiencies in their various schools. Similarly, families are helping each clean their homes and support them in their domestic difficulties. A woman confessed here that, through VC she has learnt what it means to LOVE her neighbor, a thing she never considered before. They are also helping out in helping children not to go into addictions and helping those who are already addicted to come out of it. They have also started laundry and many other petty businesses to help each member of the community become economically secure and become contributing members of their families. The have also carried two water projects. David have pictures of this.

5. Abuja
Abuja is actually the name for VC program in a cluster of villages in suburban Abuja. These villages now number 5, namely; Guidna, Kagini, Kabba, Bagusa and Tungan Wakili. A training was conducted for all the villages but there is a need for individual trainings of the communities and this begins from the 12th of next month. Not much has been done here apart from awareness. But the church is helping out in medical facilities and scholarship for children. The next training will blow the program to a good proportion.

6. Sokoto.
A rather complex community, training has been conducted here. But this training was conducted in a police barrack where most families here may be transferred. However, a few of the community members are helping families become economically secure so as to cater for their own families.

All these communities are slated for a retraining this month and next. One has already been conducted, By December, we should be able to have a comprehensive update on all the villages, including pictures. If there are specific questions please let me know.

Nigeria: April 2007

Phillips Elisha, Nigeria Director
Village Care International
April 8, 2007

Report:

If you read the last report I sent, then it still holds, however, I went to Dukaw and Amanawa communities yesterday, just to encourage them. They are doing great and are both excited to hear of your planned visit. The work is going on, they are helping each other is such a dramatic way that you cant believe. The Amanawa community is on a VC fire. Every community is performing more than expected for beginners

Sudan

The Sudan training was great but just that the community doesn’t seem ready to help themselves. They have seen too much of NGO's who only come and give them relief materials or who carry development projects without involving them. They have made a commitment to begin the process but it was a weak one. All we could hear them say is bring what you have for us and then we will bring what we have and help ourselves.

Perhaps this problem came because we actually never had a fair representation of the community. Most of those who attended the training are mostly old men. There was no mobilization prior to our arrival. It was at our arrival that we met the local authorities, told them about the program and they went ahead to announce to everyone who is interested to attend. We are not even sure if those who attended carry the voice of the community. We doubt this.

They all like the outcomes and practices. But again they have fundamental problems. For instance, you can’t just talk about cleanliness and bathing to a family who hardly gets a bucket of water per day. Even for us we were forced to bath once a day because of water scarcity. An approximate 95% of the children bath once a week. I wonder if some ever do it once in a month. Again you can talk about education where there is only one expensive school in the community where the school itself cannot admit up to 5% of the total school age of the community per year. I guess Eleos Project is taking serious these challenges. Another challenge is that these people are not essentially poor. They have plenty of cattle but they hate you to talk about these. They complain that there are street children who have no homes but they all take care of their cattle even house them. They give as much as 100 cows as bride price. If you have 100 cows in Nigeria you will perhaps marry 40 wives.

I believe strongly that these people need help but whether or not we are able to come out with the best approach not to make them dependant is something i cannot figure out now. We also looked for one man of PEACE whom we hope will lead them to a good understanding, but i must admit that we found none. All of them seem to say that we need help but none is saying that we can help ourselves by doing very little things. Again like i said this could be due to the fact that there was no consultation and mobilization prior to our arrival.

By and large we have started something and I believe if watered well we shall see the fruits in the future but right now we need a lot of patience, a lot of dealing with the culture of poverty that seem to hold this people captive and so on.

During our few days of stay there we camped, and i guess this contributed to the problem. We never felt the people, we never see them as they are, i wish we did. So this has also contributed to our inability to know the way forward. But nevertheless we struck friendship with many of the folks. An amazing people. I strongly believe that if we hold on a liitle longer we should be able to make a tremendous headway. One thing that is obvious is that they all acknowledge that they have a problem and want it solved, just that they do not see themselves as part of the solution. Rather they have this tendency of looking backward, at the effects of the war rather than looking forward to what we can all do together and make the future bright.

We have not registered children nor did we set up a committee because we felt that the climate is not ripe enough for that.

This is in brief the summary of the outing. Please feel free to ask some more incase i left out some of the things you want to hear.

Nigeria Update: March 2007

This is an update from Phillips Elisha, in Nigeria. He talk about trainings, and what two communities are doing to work toward improvement.

March 29, 2007

VC in Tugan Magajiya is running well...Lucky will be there this week to see them and collect the list and pictures of the registered children.

The Amanawa community are doing unbelievably well. They have incorporated by themselves the rest of the village folk into the program. The village head, who is a Muslim, has endorsed the program and is promoting it. Youths are seen sweeping church, mosque and market places. Trees are being nursed for planting, car wash and laundry facilities are provided for by the community for youths to earn an income to assist the families. In the church every member is encouraged to sanitize their homes, clean the children, cook good food and keep their surrounding clean. I cant believe myself the speed at which this community is going. Again workers in the community are raising funds to provide scholarship for their own.

The community in Sokoto is a complex one because where we conducted the training is in a police barracks. I have not registered any child there because by the very nature of their jobs they could get transfered to any location at any time. In Moreso, it is not easy to operate there as all our activities will be checked with suspicion.

Michael and the 9 other communities in Abuja are still working out how to coordinate themselves. However, they are doing a great job of helping the poor and the widows and making sure they sanitize their environment. They are consistently holding meetings and Michael is making sure that things are rolling. I have left them to decide what they want to do themselves without any interference. This may take some time but i believe it is the best if they own up.

I suspect that the next 2 trainings will be like that of Amanawa.

Nigeria: January 2007

Phillips Elisha talks about training in Abuja, Nigeria, and progress in Amanawa. The communities in Abuja are excited to engage in community action.

January 31, 2007

We have finished the training in Abuja and it was very successful. 120 people attended the training, 80 people indicated interest to improve practices in their homes, such as handwashing, keeping the environment clean, storying food an water properly, etc.

20 people have indicated interest in working to help other families. We agreed to register 30 children, mostly orphans and children who are very vulnerable, for community assistance.

The 9 communities that attended the training agreed to work together while working on their individual communities. The communities will meet once a month to review their work, share their progress and challenges. Pastor Michael is making sure this happens since he oversees these communities.

There were about 8 committees formed during the planning session, and all are working to see what they can do.

The Amanawa community has finished registering their 20 children. Doris, Regional Coordinator will be there soon to conclude all the details with them. I can’t say much about Tungan Magajiya after the last trip because of communication problems but by the time Doris travels to Amanawa, she will cover that area as well.

Tungan Magajiya, Update January 2007

This is a report from Tungan Magajiya in Nigeria. Phillips Elisha, National Director, along with Lucky Simon and Doris Latayo Batari, Regional Coordinators follow up with villages throughout Nigeria to follow up on the initial Community Discussions. You can read more about the Village Care Program and community discussions at www.villagecare.com.

January 24, 2007

The excitement from the last training in Tungan Magajiya has not died down completely...Most of their approaches are community based, while that is commendable I asked them to also pay attention to home practices. The sanitation committee is nursing some seedling for different kinds of fruits to distribute to the community so that they will have enough fruits for nutrition purposes. They also had a meeting last Saturday with pastors, community leaders, and pig owners to discuss ways in which pigs will be stopped from roaming the streets.

Mrs. Nuhu and her team in Tungan Magajiya organized and taught people how to keep their environment clean, talked about the need to bathe children, and even went to the place where they take water and made sure the community worked together to separate where they wash, bath, and drink from. She also taught them the importance of cutting their nails, keeping and sweeping their homes, the significance of immunizing the children etc. Mrs. Comfort has also planted seedlings to help provide the community with some basic fruits. The women on economic security have taught women how to make beads for commercial purpose and how to package them and they are launching out big this year

Two homes for sure are practicing the outcomes and practices at some degree and they are experiencing results of good health, rashes disappearing from children and the like.

Some missionary team living outside Tungan Magajiya through the pastor of Chapel of Grace Church has taught them how to use the outcomes and practices in their homes and mission outlets and the whole small community is transformed. But most of all is that the principal of the Bible College has mandated all his students to do all the practices and confessed that before this most of his students were seen in the hospital for one illness or the other, especially malaria but now, in his words, the students have dropped going to hospital by 40%. He relocated the school latrines, away from their wells and borehole. He reorganized a lot of structures to make allowance for a clean environment and introduce a compulsory school sanitation program. This is not the end but that he is perhaps doing it more than any one else in his home with amazing results. The washing of hands is a must in the school.

What is more? Lucky, Doris, and I are very religious about this. The going is slow but certainly steady. We want to be an example.