Gender Equality Nigeria Project #29299

Empowering 250 Young Women in Nigeria

by Women Inspiration Development Center

Project Report | Aug 24, 2023
TRADITIONAL WOMEN LEADERS TO ERADICATE GBV

By Busayo Obisakin | Project Leader

WOMEN LEADERS AND COMMUNITY RESPONSE TEAM

In our continued effort to eradicate violence against women and girls, Women Inspiration Development Center mobilized Iyalodes and Iyalojas (Traditional Women Leaders) to seat at the round table to discuss how to eradicate violence against women and girls where they are in their markets, and communities. These are women that sit with traditional rulers of communities that are mainly males as representative of women. Even though they are very few in each community, they are always powerful.

The aims of the program was to:

To raise awareness of Iyalodes and Iyalojas about women and girl's rights, they are mostly illiterates
To provide a platform for Iyalodes and Iyalojas to have discussions on solution to violence

against women and girls

To encourage them to take the campaigns to their local radios and communities.
To equip the traditional women leaders to inspiring and motivate other women in their communities to speak up and break the silence around sexual and physical violence.

To motivate them as mother of all to sensitize the men and boys in their communities of the need to respect women and girls and the need to live together in harmony and mutual respect.

The program was able to provide the desired information to the women which was to create awareness among them of reasons they need to join their voices to the campaign against violence against women and girls, the need not to turn deaf ears to stories of Gender Based Violence happening to them and around them.

Through the dialogue with them, it was discovered that rape are sexual harassment are happening to older women and it is on the increase now. One of the Iyalodes (72 years old) even shared her experience of almost being raped inside her own house. They all agreed that all hands must be on deck now to eradicate the menace of sexual and physical violence in our communities.

Links:

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=644785194352561&set=pcb.644785314352549&__cft__[0]=AZVhXLlL6f3z9WS4x7Mw3xJNoM29Q4Gt70fCrHXu

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May 6, 2023
FEMALE TEACHERS CONNECTED TO DIGITAL SPACE ON IWD

By Busayo Obisakin | Executive Director

Some of the participants & officials at the event

In our continued effort to eradicate violence against women and girls, Women Inspiration Development Center marked 2023 International Women’s Day by connecting the female teachers to World pulse so that they can be part of digital space to access information keep their students informed and be the voices of the voiceless in their school on Violence against women and girls.

The aims of the program was to:

· To raise awareness of women's rights on gender equality

· To provide a platform for women to connect to digital space (Worldpulse)

· To learn how to tell and share their stories online and offline

· To inspire and motivate the women

Based on the Trainathon of World Pulse, I led the female teachers on Online Story Telling training. The participants was first led to download the World Pulse app, they joined World pulse and then went ahead with the storytelling training. There was a serious challenge of Internet as the network kept on fluctuating and many of the participants could not finish the training.

The joy of it however was that many of the participants was able to join World pulse and they continue with the trainings as they become members. Five of the participants have successfully finished their training on story telling at World pulse trainathon and they have gotten their certificates. Others are still on their training because we have a WhatsApp group for the participants to continue to monitor their progress and how they are thriving at World pulse.

We learnt an important lesson through this program which is, in the next training like this we will definitely go and do it in a café where there will be stable network and laptops made available for the participants.

Other activities to commensurate the day were talks on communication skills, self-care, see something say something, break the silence around violence against women and girls in your schools and communities.

The interactive section was based on sexual violence in school and domestic violence in our community The teachers revealed a lot of sexual violence occurrences in their schools among female students and male teachers. They mentioned "poverty” as the major contributor. Many of the male teacher attract the young girls with small amount of money because most of the girls are from very poor homes where they are not well catered for at all. Our interaction with these teachers opened our eyes to more ways we can go about doing our work in eradicating violence against women and girls in the community. At the end of the program, the newly passed law on gender based violence, “Violence Against Person’s Act was distributed to the teachers to take to their schools for sensitizations and certificate of attendance to the program was also given to them.

It was indeed a wonderful way of celebrating the day!

Participant Receiving Certificate of Attendance

Participants and officials at the event

Links:

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Jan 23, 2023
WOMEN INSPIRATION DEVELOPMENT CENTER 2022 REVIEW

By Busayo Obisakin | Executive Director

The Present Shelter

It has been a dream for a very long time to have a place where survivors of domestic violence could be spending time to move away from their place of abuse for their safety and sanity.

Shelter for the abuse is not something that is easy to come by in Nigeria. In fact, apart from Lagos and Abuja, it is only in three other states out of the remaining 34 states in Nigeria that have something like shelter for the abuse in Nigeria.

We have lost many lives as a result of not having a place to keep the women away from their place of abuse before their cases are being resolved and for about 4 years, this has been a serious burden in the heart of WIDC team.

Women Inspiration Development Center Shelter for the Abused became a reality through GlobalGiving Girls Fund Award and donation from one of the GlobalGiving Corporate partners.

Before we finished the three-bedroom flat shelter, 6 survivors were already waiting to occupy the place. One of them was a 14 years old mother that was impregnated by her step-father. To hide the crime, the mother of the girl when the pregnancy was beginning to show send the girl away from her husband house and brough her to a far away town and abandon her there in a dilapidated house and ran away.

The girl was there till she gave birth to her baby and was always on the street to beg for food. Her baby was 5 months old when she was rescued by our team.

Another of the survivors presently at the shelter was a 15 years old orphan with 34 weeks pregnancy, she gave birth to her baby last night. She was raped and held hostage by a drug addict. She had a lot of knife wounds on her body when she was rescued.

We are so excited at WIDC for the achievement of this shelter and we are so grateful to all the people that contributed to it through GlobalGiving Girls Fund Campaign. The shelter could accommodate 12 people at a time and will be servicing at least 6 states in the south-west of Nigeria.

We are aspiring to have a bigger shelter that could accommodate at least 50 people at a time and will be serving anyone from any part of Nigeria. It is a great need! We already have the landed property in the heart of Ile-Ife and fenced it with gate out of the fund we earlier got and the estimate to build is $45,000.

One of the survivors that gave birth last nig

THE LANDED PROPERTY FOR THE BIGGER SHELTER

SHELTER WE ARE ASPIRING

Links:

WIDC YEAR 2022 REEL

Attachments:

WIDC YEAR 2022 REVIEW (DOCX)

5 Attachments

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