Nigeria: Women for Empowerment, Development, and Gender Reform
Project Update
Our partner in Nigeria, Women for Empowerment, Development, and Gender Reform, is adapting sections in Our Bodies, Ourselves on Safer Sex, HIV/AIDS, Birth Control, Pregnancy, and Infertility and Assisted Reproduction into two local Nigerian dialects, Pidgin English and Yoruba.
To ensure speedy access to their health materials, our partner has also launched campaigns that use an interactive social format to engage and inform community members. Some cool examples include: outreach on the local canoe transport system that brings women and girls from remote farms to marketplaces; a motorcycle-and-megaphone campaign to take simple health messages to neighboring villages; ongoing peer educator trainings with village hair dressers; projects that engage and involve men as allies; and a voluntary "Outreach Walk" to disseminate health information and recruit volunteers.
Their goal is to reach 282 communities. That's 1.5 million people!
Guess how many communities have already been covered. 180.
Despite these accomplishments, 2010 has been a difficult year for our partner. Early in the year, while doing outreach, the project coordinator and dear colleague was kidnapped alongwith 6 team members. Held hostage for a number of weeks, they were released only after friends and family were able to comply with a ransom demand and spent several days recuperating in hospital.
On the heels of this and other backlash, our partner has re-grouped, re-located and successfully developed a bridge building initiative to reach and educate power-brokers about the critical need for health information in the community. .
If you would like more information about this project and explore ways you might get involved, please contact the OBOS Global Initiative staff.
Meet Our Partner
Women for Empowerment, Development, and Gender Reform is non-profit and non-governmental organization of 39 volunteers, all women, that include trained health workers, para-legals, lawyers, gynecologists, midwives and teachers. With a focus on HIV/AIDS, domestic violence, reproductive health, they ensure grassroots women and vulnerable communities have access to and use information on their bodies and sexual health to make choices that protect and affirm their sexuality.
For more information, please contact either the OBOS Global Initiative or the organization directly.
Contact Person: Eyitemi Mogbeyiteren / Itohan Idahosa
Address: PO Box 1235, Benin City, Edo State, Nigeria
Email: [email protected]
Phone: 07083748828 / 08034897568
Looking for a Copy?
If you would like copies of the Nigerian booklet and other materials, please contact Women for Empowerment, Development, and Gender Reform at [email protected].
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