It is with great excitement and fulfillment that I write to share with you the report of SI4DEV activities in the first 21 days of the Partner Announcement (HERE) since March 1st, 2018. Since then, many location teams have convened virtual or in-person meeting, and some have finalized initial activities as you can see below.

SI4DEV is an NGO registered in Nigeria as Strategy and Innovation for Development Initiative, and is the Nigerian affiliate organization of The Spring Development Initiative in the USA. SI4DEV brings together individuals and groups and provides training on practical skills towards achieving democracy and economic prosperity for grassroots communities.

SI4DEV focuses our long-term plans towards achieving national development objectives while working in the short term to invest in local people and their communities. We endeavor to extend our projects to multiple communities across the states, federal capital and geo-political regions in the country of focus.

Please see activity highlights below:

1 POLICY CONTRIBUTIONS

In a position paper arising from the SI4DEV Governance group on the importance of youth involvement in leadership and political process in Nigeria, a solution was proffered for the underage voting in Nigeria, which will also ensure that no legal and eligible voter is disenfranchised. The position paper was published by a national daily in Nigeria, found online at Businessday on Sunday.

We are also currently running a Nigerian Leadership and Economic Outlook Survey to hear about public opinions on some important national issues. The responses will be analysed and used for project planning for Strategy and Innovation for Development Initiative (SI4DEV) Partners. The survey can be completed through this Google Form.

2 VOTER REGISTRATION MONITORING

As part of Strategy and Innovative Development Initiatives (SI4DEV) mandate to empower community leaders towards achieving an improved accountable and transparent electoral process in Nigeria, SI4DEV partners across all the states in Nigeria were mandated to visit INEC offices in their respective states.

This follows our position paper published in Businessday newspaper on the importance of youth involvement in leadership and political process in Nigeria, where the SI4DEV Governance Group reiterated our commitment to support INEC in voter education and maintaining registration integrity.

The objectives of the visits are to:

  1. Assess INEC Information Communication Unit (Survey)
  2. Identify challenge(s) affecting voter’s registration and,
  3. Proffer solutions to identified challenge(s).

So far, the Akwa Ibom State, Uyo and Oyo State, Ibadan location groups have completed this task and their reports can be found HERE and HERE.

3 LEADERSHIP TRAINING AND SCHOLARSHIPS

Two partners received N20,000 scholarships each and have been accepted into the Nirmala Chellarams Non-Profit Management Accelerator Certificate Program in Lagos. They are:

  1. Peniel, Mark-Edomwande
  2. Oghenekefe, Ettoh

In addition, several subject matter experts among the partners (including Joy Iseki, Grace Jimbo, Hegarty Philip, John Adegbola, Ako Oku, Sijuade Abdul, David Arome, Abdulqaseem Elmahmoud) as well as myself have led trainings on diverse topics in all the development focus groups with attendance of between 10 and 25 for each Whatsapp event.

4 INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY SEMINARS

For this year’s IWD, SI4DEV supported our Partners on a seminar to promote girls’ access to education, women’s access to equal opportunities in the workplace, and help discourage and eliminate gender-based violence in our community, state and country. This isn’t just about women. Men and boys also play an important role in empowering, mentoring, and supporting women as their mothers, sisters, wives, co-workers and fellow citizens working to develop our community. The theme for the events was “Understanding the Rights of women and girls: Ending gender-based violence among women and girls”.

  1.    — The event held in Uyo on 10th March 2018 and targeted community youth leaders who are willing to volunteer as change agents to speak against gender-based violence. At the end of the day, 20 (6 males and 14 females) youths volunteered to be part of SI4DEV Uyo location group. Please read more about the Uyo event and see picturesHERE.
  2.     —The event held in Ado-Ekiti on the 17thof March 2018, and had as delegates, secondary school students. A keynote address was delivered by the wife of the priest. The location group will work with the school management to coordinate an SI4DEV club. See pictures on Instagram.

5 IN-PERSON SESSIONS

SI4DEV 2018 Partners have created 35 Whatsapp Location Groups covering 25 states and the FCT. We encourage partners not represented to set up a group for their State/LGA and add people resident in their area to the location group even if they are not members of SI4DEV. After creating the group, the Program Manager is added to the group for awareness and support.

So far 9 locations have coordinated in-person meetings, including Uyo, Ibadan, Ado-Ekiti, Ika, Abuja, Kaduna, Makurdi, Kano and Maiduguri, to brainstorm on action plans, carry out events, partnership activities, community needs assessments, etc. See Kaduna Meetup HERE.

3 locations have held virtual Whatsapp meetings including Ilorin, Sagamu, and Cross-River.

6. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY

One of the goals of SI4DEV partners is to engage with government and help advocate for better accountability to promises. Members of the Oyo State group Ibadan have agreed to engage with the Waste Management Agency in their local area to hold them to account of maintaining the cleanliness of their environment. They are assessing the areas that are worst hit and collating pictures and evidence, as well as needs assessment to determine method of engagement. Under consideration is a letter to the managing director of the private contractor, the government management lead, and copied to the media. Pictures can be seen on our social media pages, including LinkedIn.

7. PARTNERSHIP ACTIVITIES

Location groups have identified community and faith-based organizations in their local area to partner with as a means to accomplish some of their personal development and community improvement goals in alignment with SI4DEV. Along this line, partners in Makurdi partnered with the Rotary Club in a sanitation drive to mark the latter’s golden jubilee. See report HERE.

8. COMMUNITY NEEDS ASSESMENT

SI4DEV partners work at the grassroots and community level to initiate innovative improvement ideas. To better inform this work, and arrive at the most high priority issues facing their local areas, needs assessment is imperative.

The Uyo and Yenogoa location groups are currently carrying out the SI4DEV designed community needs assessment. At least 50 respondents will be sampled in each local government area, and up to 100 depending on the population size obtained from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). An online version of the survey can be found HERE.

 

For more information, please email back at info@sid-initiative.orgor reach out to me on +1-4258028209 (Whatsapp only). Please join us on social media and feel free to tag us or share our photos directly on our pages.

44 thoughts on “SI4DEV Partner Activities – Report For March 2018”

  1. This is simply the efficacy of Plan, with a formidable team for a task. Newer and older organizations has to learn from Si4DEV.
    Great achievements in JUST 21days! The sky, am sure never be the limit except a starting point. Well done and kudos to us all @si4dev.

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