Maid Strong: Stop Trafficking of Adolescent Girls

May to July 2021:

Summary

Inwelle Centre Maid Strong Project continues to wax stronger and stronger in spite of lack of funds.

Since May 2021, we have

• tutored  indigent girls in Mathematics, Sciences, and Computer literacy;
• assisted our Miad Strong teenage single mothers in acquiring marketable skills and returning to school, taking  school exams that have the potential to raise  their monthly earning from $30.00 to $100.00;
• worked diligently to change mindsets of under-aged single mothers from becoming baby factories and rehabilitating and uniting them with their families;
• continued to provide health care information, face masks, school materials, and access to clean water to help in hygiene and sanitation;
• started the process of registering an academy for the indigent; and
• started a women’s progressing project to build the capacity of rural women to keep their young daughters at home, instead of trafficking them to the city centers where they are sexually exploited and where they face untold sexual and physical violence.

Access to Clean Water

We reported last quarter that our water pump sumo was vandalized and stolen. Being very much aware that combating the COVID-19 pandemic necessitates that people wash hands more frequently than before and that water supply is absolutely necessary, we made making our bore hole functionable again. We were able to replace our solar sumo pump through tasking ourselves to provide the N450,000.00 required to buy a new pump. We now have water. The village has water as well. The photos below show the new installations

Tutoring:

We continued to tutor young people, especially young girls at our satellite centres. See photos.

As we continue to tutor indigent girls, we continue to see the need for providing quality education that will level the field for these girls and curb the system that makes them graduate almost illiterates. Our biggest achievement this quarter is setting the establishing of Inwelle Centre International Academy for Girls in Motion. See our logo.

Fortifying the women to empower the Maid Strong Girls

We started by teaching our adult education women  rudimentary things – adult education and healthcare information. We have been teaching them arithmetic—addition, subtraction, multiplication-- to make them literate, we taught them how to write simple sentences, their names, for even though they can speak pidgin English, some of them have never written much. We also taught them the rudiments of event hosting/catering. We have taught them how to make bar and liquid soap, disinfectant, and bleach. The make these in small scale and sell to their neighbours.  Presently, our strategy is to scale up their skill level and guide them to form a formidable team, capable of becoming a moving force in the economic life of the community and other communities bothering the town. Hence we are guiding them to start a cooperative.

Activities:

1. Twenty-five women comprising widows, single mothers, and survivors of violence against women are being organized and trained to start and register a cooperative, form a leadership structure, open an account, market their products and pay themselves salaries.
2. By August ending, they will be trained in serious skills that will enable them generate income.
3. We have hired a business expert to teach the women the skills needed to market, distribute, keep proper accounting method and advertise their product.
4. Ten of the women will learn how to make soap, disinfectant, bleach, sanitizer and other products needed to keep good hygiene and to combat such pandemic as; Ten women will learn bakery, event hosting and event decoration; while Five women will learn the administrative, marketing, and account keeping for the cooperative. Once the cooperative starts running, the women will teach each other their area of capacity. In the end, all the women will know how to function in each of the areas.
5. We will Purchase equipment for baking, event hosting, and event decoration.

This report period saw great success and one one sadness. Below is the report for this below.

In December 2020, Inwelle Study and Resource Satellite Centre at Ogidi patnered with Odida Ogidi youths to host a Jamboree during which boys and girls showcased their talents. It was an evening of dancing an joy. 

From January to March 2021, the Centre continued to run after school tutoring and to have the library open to the public. That meant that we had to purchase more face masks as we insisted that users of the centre must be properly masked. 

In March, Inwelle Centre Adult Education group were taught  Catering, event hosting, and event decoration during the International Women’s Day 2021 Entrepreneurship Workshop.

In  March 2021, Inwelle Centre had a bit of  sad and disturbing news. In the thick of the COVID-19 pandemic, Inwelle Centre provided a solar-powered source of water bore hole at Odida Ogidi. We posted the photo in jubilation that this source of water supply will help in the fight against the virus as people can now fetch water for their daily needs. Sadly, March 17 morning, we discovered that someone or some people have vandalized the bore hole and stolen the solar powered sumo water pumping machine installed. This pumping machine cost us N450,000.00 to purchase last year. Who knows how much it will cost now that the cost of everything is hitting the roof?  We wre really sad. 

They Did It!!!  Inwelle Centre Odida Ogidi Adult Education group  Skills Acquisition participants were trained from March 25 to 26, 2021to make soap, disinfectant, and  bleach. The skill acquisition programme at INWELLE SATELLITE CENTRE ODIDA OGIDI is to teach women (especially mother's) on how to produce household cleaning products with the aim of reducing high poverty rate among women in that rural area (ODIDA OGIDI). How? When they acquire the knowledge of producing disinfectant, liquid soap, bar soap and bleach, they can be self-employed and also save money used in buying those products at the market. For example, a liter of hypo bleach in the market is N800 whereas N900 can be used to produce 10 liters of bleach. Also the aim is to control the spread of germs, bacteria, found at homes, schools, markets etc and reduction of diseases and infections that are common in women and children.

 The women were educated on the need for safety wears and measure, when dealing with caustic soda and other harmful chemicals. We made sure that they understood the seriousness of adequate protection while handling chemicals. They were shown the picture of result of careless handling of the chemicals for production and were also shown some safety wears, such as nose guards, hand gloves, lab coat etc.

Since we started teaching young girls and women on production of household products in all our other centres, we have never been so fulfilled and happy the way we were when we taught ODIDA OGIDI women.

 Reasons

1)we saw in them the zeal and eagerness to learn in other to be self-employed.

2)most of the participants are young mother's and single mothers that really need those cleaning products for their families and children's proper hygiene.

3) the majority of them are unemployed because they are in rural area and some are nursing mothers.

4) they can now produce and sell the product to earn money for themselves.

We were so encouraged by their enthusiasm that we are planning how to help them form a cooperative so that they can start producing in big quantities and selling.This way, they become empowered to resist the enticement that makes them allow the trafficking of their young daughters or tacitly encouraging their daughters to prostitute themselves or engage in transactional sex or become baby factories. Through this cooperative, these women comprising widows, single mothers, and survivors of violence against women will be organized and trained to establish and register a cooperative, form a leadership structure, open an account, market their products and pay themselves salaries.

Links:

• Skills Acquisition Training Session
• Skills Acquisition Training Session
• Skills Acquisition Training Session Participant Talking

We have continued to tutor young people, especially girls at our centre. We still supplied masks to particpants. Thanks to our youth corps members. Kudos to these Inwelle Centre amazing Corpers. Inwelle Centre beneficiaries can not stop talking about their good work at the Centre. Odida Ogidi  stakeholdersappreciates the tremendous work they did while serving at Inwelle Centre. One of the youth copers writes on Facebook

Inwelle Centre Ogidi now has solar powered water Borehole. Yeh!!! Thanks to our Executive Director, who sponsored this project from her summer teaching salary. We need water if we have to beat this COVID-19 pandemic by washing hands constantly to maintain hygiene.  In the face of hunger, adding buying of water to the mix of the demands on family finances can cause people to wash hands less times than is demanded.  Also, girls in indigent families are saddled with the burden of going to distant places to fetch water. We have put the cost of buying water and the burden of fetching water to rest. Anyone in the community can get water free from Inwelle Centre. Yeh!!! Again.

We shipped our 40ft container of teaching and reading materials, 30 Computers, chairs and tables, building materials for our proposed girls’ academy. Hopefully, the containing will arrive in Nigeria on or about December 25. Then we will face the burden of clearing the container and transporting the goods to Enugu, Inwelle Centre headquarter. We are right now appealingto friends and family for the fund to make this happen. We are optimistic that as usual, they will come to our rescue.

Links:

• One of corpers posted his work at Inwelle Centre on facebook

Inwelle Study and Resource Centre opened its door in June after two months of quarantine. The pictures we are posting in this report is what happened in the first week we opened. We were besieged. Children wanted to go to school, but could not because of the chances and consequences of getting COVID-19. Inwelle Centre was the answer to their quest for education. But alas! No masks immediately.

We bought one 500 masks. Inwelle Centre provided masks and maintained the required distance. We needed money to provide more masks. We called on community leaders and stakeholder through our Facebook postings to help in donating masks. Some answered our call.

We needed volunteers to help teach the children who are now admitted to study at the centre in batches to create the safe distance required to curb the spread of COVID-19. We needed money to provide food to the girls in our community as the pandemic strangled their source of income. We need money to pay salaries. We did not receive COVID fund. We are still struggling. We had to downsize our staff. The number of girls and children we have to carter for keep increasing.

As before and after photos of Inwelle Centre’s most recent activities show, we are still on it— working to enhance lives and advance the SDGs— access to learning in the face of COVID-19 pandemic. We are still calling on all humanitarians to come on board and make learning accessible to the young ones—the future of the human race.

See our set of pictures to see what the Centre has done to take care of children studying. 

Links:

• Facebook Postings

The Work We Did

1. tutored girls in academic subjects and computer literacy and computer skills acquisition,
2. engaged in adult education of their mothers to make them partners in working to keep their daughters in school instead of sending them out as house helps in big cities;  teaching willing parents basic English and Arithmetic to aid them in their petty trading, opening and running bank accounts to save some of their earnings for paying the little levies that the schools demand to keep their children in school.
3. held seminars and workshops for young people—boys and girls to instill in them the concept of “He for She” and “See Something: Say Something” as two of the tools we use in combating the trafficking of girls to big cities as house help and in fighting the horrendous violence—physical, emotional, and sexual, some of these girls experience when sent to the cities,
4. participated in the 2020 International Women’s Day celebration,
5. held a symposium, and
6. maintained six girls in our Safe Haven scheme. 

Inwelle Centre staff and contracted part time teachers, IT teachers and counselors held daily tutoring in academic subjects and computer literacy and computer skills acquisition, and counseling of the girls. The part-time tutors we engaged gave classes in Mathematics, English, Physical and Biological Sciences, Arts and Social Studies. They also engaged in one-on-one tutoring of struggling girls. We are happy to note that their efforts uncovered and tackled the myth of some girls termed iti-kom kom—dumb, empty tins because the girls were not able to grasp academic materials as fast as their peers. They gave these girls extra lessons and established also that some of them were dyslexic and as such were slow in learning. We plan to follow up on this in our programme, hence we are already discussing and seriously searching for how to establish a project we call “Education as a Second Language” which will engage disability experts in helping these girls achieve educational success. Not being able to succeed academically is one of the things that made many of them vulnerable and easy targets for being sent out as house help.

WE HELD SEMINARS AND WORKSHOPS AT THE TWO CENTRES

Contracted experts held seminars and workshops for us to build the capacity of the girls to acquire life skills, their mothers to understand the problems their daughter face when trafficked to the cities, men and boys in the communities to sensitize them on their part to making sure that girls in their midst are protected from violence. Our “He-for-She” seminars made the boys, especially to watch out for the girls while our” See Something: Say Something” Slogan encouraged both girls and boys to bring to our notice incidents of girls in jeopardy of being trafficked or married off. In each case that came to our notice, we were able to intervene successfully. The give-in on our part was agreeing to extend our tutoring and computer skills acquisition classes to young boys. We did this without jeopardizing the integrity of our programme. Actually, we exceeded the number of girls we promised to train. The Centre bore the brunt of this extension as the Programme Director had to forego her salary while some trainers served as volunteers and some trained people beyond their remuneration, especially as we also added Adult education classes to our programme for the mothers.

Safe Haven Report:

We added two more girls to our Safe Haven part of the project. We now have six girls who are in dire need in our safe haven programme. Three of them learned baking and event decoration. Two learned beauty salon skills and make-up artistry, while one learned printing. These six girls were given monthly stipends of $55.00 each for their personal upkeep. One of the girls (X) simply does not have any assistance from her impoverished relatives. Her parents are deceased. She hawks wares for people living close by. She aspires to enter into a higher institution. She is still training as a printing press specialist. We are investing in her skills training hugely. We hope that when is she gets her printing press skills she would be part of the cohort of trainers to train other girls, given the necessary equipment. Investing in her will work well since part of Inwelle Centre plan is to open a skills and entrepreneurship Centre in the main centre for the at-risk girls. Since the path being created for them is for them to take the senior secondary school certificate exam and gain admission into a higher institution and be able to pay their tuition and take care of themselves, they have been assisted to open accounts, taught how to manage their money, and save so that they can pay for their education themselves. They will also be the skills trainer for the next batch of girls.

Girl X says: I have learnt different types of binding including soft and hard binding. I was also taught how to type and print novels.  I was taught on how to use the perforating machine and numbering machine in perforating and numbering of papers like tickets, receipt, etc. I was also taught on how to create and design covers of novels, brochures. I was also taught on how to burn wedding plate and brochures plate using the burning machine. I was shown the chemicals used in removing stains which is the delete in full and other chemicals. I participated in printing of projects and covering them using hard cover, the if anybody need spine on it, I can also do that, I can also design covers on system using Corel draw. We were constantly occupied with programmes on brochures for burials and weddings. We created many materials because during Christmas. We also printed t-shirts for people who have marriage celebration and other activities such as traditional dances and printing flyers for churches. I have learned so much. Inwelle Centre director has promised that if I prove that I have learned enough to teach other girls she will look for money to buy the machine and set up a printing press in one of the rooms. I have worked had not to disappoint her.

Girl Y says “I have learnt the following: how to makeup, fix nail, dye hair, relax hair, and also how to weave hair. Firstly, I believe the organization aim for sponsoring me and my colleagues in acquiring skills is to build independent ladies. The question now is, was this aim achieved? I will say the answer is YES! Because it will help me in school, the money I will be getting from it I will use it to take care of myself and not to look towards men for money. Even if I am not in school, it will help me as a young girl because I will use it to feed myself, clothe myself, and buy anything I want as a young lady. When I get married, it will help because I will use it to help my family. I thank Positive Action for Girls and Women for giving me this opportunity. I also thank the director and staff of Inwelle Centre for nurturing us and showing us that we are somebody.”

Z says “I can say I have learnt quite a lot from this skill acquisition scheme sponsored by Positive Action for Girls and Women and carried out by Inwelle Study and Resource Centre. At least I can now do the following: makeup, fixing of nail and eye lashes, relaxing hair, dyeing hair (different colours), and also weave hair. I am very grateful for this opportunity. I will never be the same again.”

Girl A says: “I learnt how to bake and decorate events. Please see my photos. I am very grateful. I am 18 years old, I am the third child and first daughter out of 6 children in my family. l graduated from high school last year but due to some financial problem, I was unable to go to the university. I came to know Inwelle Center through one of your workers. She was the one who brought me for last year boot camp. It was at the boot camp that they taught me so many skills like how to make disinfectant, liquid soap etc., which will make me independent of my parents and other people. It was at the boot camp that they taught us about Maid Strong which was the main thing that will make a girl independent. I was among the Safe Haven girls. The Centre paid us N20,000 every month as we were learning the skill of how to make cake and decorations. I am very happy for being Inwelle Centre daughter and thank God for bringing such helpful programme to our state.”

Girl B  who engaged in baking and catering says “I learnt  to fry egg yam/yam bugger there by mixing flour with sugar, salt, beny, water, pepper, Etc., how to cream/turn cake and also how to measure flour and butter with scale i.e. 250gram being 1 sachet of butter and some other measurements, how to cover baked cake thereby mixing butter with icing sugar, color, using rolling pin to roll it and use it to cover your cake. I learnt how to mix and bake cake: adding butter, flour, sugar, egg, flavor, yeast, calypso, etc; how to mix bones: adding flour, yeast, butter, sugar, baking powder, flavor, water, etc and finally how to mix and bake biscuit.  I learnt how to mix and bake meat pie: adding oil, meat, thyme, Irish potato, green pepper, carrot; then mix your flour with nutmeg, salt, butter, flavor etc. I learnt how to cook sauce using carrot, green pepper, meat and other spices. I learnt how to take orders from customers and shop for the right ingredients, cook and bake for catering an event. I am so happy. Thank you all that helped me to achieve these things.         

See the five girls in action in the supporting pictures.

The sixth (Girl C)  wrote a longer story as she became pregnant during her programme, had a baby and is still in the programme. We had to employ her so that she could take care of herself and her baby. She works three days a week and studies three days a week because she want to study law in the university. And we know she can do it. She stumbled, but she picked herself right up.