Services

Output 1

Increased demand for basic, post-basic literacy, entrepreneurship/capacity; awareness of education/ social policies and procedures; social inclusion in home and community services:

The focus of this output is to increase the demand for basic and post basic literacy, Life Skills and social inclusion services within a strengthened Educational and Social system. The approach involves supporting the communities, Local Government Authorities, and State governments to build a sustainable community system that links up with education and social providers and policy-makers to ensure effective awareness, availability and accessibility of quality basic literacy, entrepreneurship through Life Skills, social inclusion services and increased accountability. We work to see a demonstrated shift in social norms relating to home and community proceedings, suggesting a growing consensus among the women group, men and boys; community leaders’ preparedness for girls and women emerging exclusion/violence and readiness for action. The unit also strengthens behavioral change towards significantly increased enrolment in special classes, basic, post-basic literacy and numeracy centers, skills (farming and entrepreneurship) in the present and potential communities of the emergency states through the use of sponsored jingles, radio talk/ discussions, and social media

Output 2

Improved information generation with knowledge, attitude, and practice across social categories and issues being used in policy and practice.

Output 2 has demonstrated that good data, when understood and analyzed, can be immensely powerful and effective.  This Management Information System unit stands to use and generate reports and relevant indicators that measure the results of the outputs, outcomes, and impacts relative to the target goals. The data is used for a variety of purposes beyond planning and performance review, such as informing media, the senior educational and social officers of various agencies and ministries benefit immensely from the collated monthly data. This output is aiming to go beyond the Educational Management Information System (EMIS) – into knowledge management, more generally with international publications and M&E thereby giving donors and other international partners’ accessibility. It is also the responsibility of the unit to arrange review, monitoring and evaluation workshops and to provide an update on the hiccups. The unit, going forward shall collaborate and organize study tour of some well-experienced organizations within and possibly outside the country to gather more experience that will clearly boost the impact. This, however, requires additional supports and funding from government and international communities.

Output 3

Improved delivery of literacy and Entrepreneurship through Life Skills activities/services.
Literacy, Life Skills and Social inclusion indicators of children, girls, and women in the northern states are among the lowest in the world. Output 3 is about service delivery in Literacy, Life Skills and Social inclusion and the systems supporting service delivery. The unit in collaboration with the Agencies for Mass Education ensures that accessible literacy and skills centers are available, review or designed a curriculum for the programme, supply of teaching/training materials and equipment, learning books, effective supervision, incentives and transportation for the facilitators). There have been major achievements impacting on Literacy, numeracy, Life Skills, and Social Inclusion;

Output 4

Strengthened State and LGA governance of ESC systems geared to special education, basic literacy, Life Skills, social inclusion/welfare and Improved human resource policies

The Avabe Initiative approach has focused on improving the Educational and Social Care (ESC) delivery system as a way to increase literacy, skills and social inclusion coverage. This systems approach will be carried over to this emergency projects. This fourth output focuses on the policy and strategy framework within which the education and social system functions and deals with policy and planning; partner co-ordination; advocacy and institutional change; Improved human resource policies and Public Finance Management (PFM). Special attention is placed on human resource management which is so vital for effective education and social service delivery. This is as much dependent on production factors, information systems, distribution, staff mix, recruitment and retention as it is on the political factors influencing human resources. Strengthening HR management is a major thrust of Avabe Initiative as this is seen as one of the key bottlenecks to improving the education and social services in Nigeria. Lack of appropriate visibility and low staff motivation, limited transparency on education and social budget and expenditure are other challenges that require interventions.

Increasing the numbers and distribution of female social workers in northern Nigeria is a priority. Focus has been on accreditation of schools and training institutions or centres and, improving the throughput rate of training institutions. Helping to build a fully functioning and transparent HRIS (Human Resource Information System) has been a key component which may require a funding gab going forward.

Adult and Skills acquisition centres has gained state and local level recognition and is being implemented in state-specific ways in one form or another in each of the 2 states – a major improvement from the previous fragmented institutional arrangements. Kano appears to be most advanced (with better budget allocation and reasonable percentage of resources used for Human Resources); Kogi State is yet to advance their registration requirements for other NGOs and CBOs that intends to enter into these developmental activities and build on these achievements. Other pressing issues for consideration going forward include innovation measures; developing the Minimum Service Package for literacy and skills acquisition facilitators; building blocks for a service investment plan that guarantees the social workers to the level of being considered as permanent service workers; strengthening public financial management systems; and creating an Eminent Persons Group. Sincerely, we have not been able to achieve much in this regards due to our low financial status and lack of individual and government commitments.

Summary

Summary

Avabe Initiative for Community Development is a National non-governmental and humanitarian organization incorporated in Nigeria in December 2011, dedicated to the proposition that absolute illiteracy and poverty can be alleviated and are indeed eradicable in line with the MDG Goals that improved into the current 2030 Sustainable Development Goals 1,  4, 5 and 8. To achieve this, Avabe Initiative’s mission is to work with the educational institutions, media houses, agencies, states/federal ministries, all arms of community leaders and focal groups, donors, NGOs and CSOs to reduce illiteracy, advance girls/child education through provision of non-formal education, literacy and gender equality campaigns; skills acquisition, advocacy and consultation.

We are supporting the increase in women’s literacy, numeracy and empowerment programmes that improve their prominence and participation in activities that create livelihood and reduce violence against women and girls. We do this by creating a more conducive environment that allows easy access to literacy, numeracy and empowerment programmes that allow women’s participation, and reducing the culture of silence and acceptance around gender-based violence. We have:

• Special education that provides knowledge to children, inspire girls and young women to advance their education after basic literacy, guide them towards becoming professional of their choice.
• Adult classes that provide literacy, numeracy, and life-skills services to girls aged 9-17 and women above 18years.
• Training and vocational centers where girls, women, and youths are being trained on entrepreneurship and many other skills that ensure their creativity, income generation, and self-reliance. Computer and other life skill training is also provided as an innovation for advancement.
• Organized weekly sensitization sessions at the various classes, centers, and communities to educate the populace on the importance of Education, safe environments that ensure healthy family and management of conflict without violence.

By supporting the creation and provision of sustainable literacy and skills acquisition programmes through physical and strong policy framework for girls and women’s right to education, participation in all community engagements and the life-skills sessions aimed to improve their health and reduce cases of gender-based discrimination and violence, and by supporting women’s networking and prominence, Avabe Initiative believes that achieving 2030 SDGs 4, 5 and 8 by 2030 is feasible. We also believe that the level of poverty and joblessness will be tremendously reduced. Conflict will more likely to be managed non-violently which invariably results to peace-building that permits sustained efforts.

We create linkage for the beneficiaries as a complementary effort towards achieving the capacity building and empowerment programme by collaborating with media houses, micro finances, marketers, and suppliers. We make advocacy visits to decision implementer, community leaders to seek awareness and support for the beneficiaries. As a follow-up and to enhance the sustainability of achieved efforts, we monitor and evaluate the independent performances of the beneficiaries while providing knowledge management through many social media and reports for public sharing. These give an opportunity for update and assessment of the progress that foster focus and innovation while sharing success stories and challenges with others. These initiatives and activities and implemented through our project titled ‘Educate and Empower Women for Turn Around’ (EW4TA).

Context

Nigeria is Africa’s most populous country, with a population of 171 million, including 40 million children. It is also the continent’s largest economy and has achieved strong economic growth rates in recent years. There have been some improvements in the situation of children and women in recent years, but a lot still remains to be done.

Over half the population are ignorant that still lives in poverty. There are major regional disparities, and 90 percent of the poorest people live in the north of the country. Kano and Kogi States where we operate falls within this region.

Consequently, most women aged 18 to 49 and girls aged 09 to 17 can hardly read or write. Majority of them are stark illiterates and drop-out from schools as a result of early marriage, incapacity, and displacement caused by insurgency and crises. According to UNICEF record, “we have about 67% of women and girls that are literate in Nigeria with over 80% of the illiterate’s ones from Northern and middle belt of Nigeria. Primary school enrolment and attendance are improving, but there are wide disparities, with attendance lowest in the North, in rural areas and among the poorest. Nigeria has 10.5 million out-of-school children, the world’s highest number. Girls’ primary school attendance has been improving, but this has not been the case for girls from the poorest households”.

As a result, we see many children especially girls of school age from 7-18 years hawking petty items of about $1 value, children of 3-5 years playing while few others are in school due to displacements, lack of political/individual will, ignorance or financial inability of the parents. Again, few fortunate children in school go late and return home early due to falling in educational systems, most schools lack basic materials that give conducive learning environment thereby decreasing students’ performance and increasing examination malpractices. Most schools, literacy/vocational and social welfare centers lack vital data that guides in Monitoring and evaluation.

Insurgence, religious and ethnic unrest in Nigeria especially the recent armed conflict in north-eastern Nigeria that was one of the world’s deadliest for children. The incident that extended to other parts of the country displaced many people and children it’s a contending issue that calls for interventions. This has resulted to the dramatic rise in violence, growing recruitment and use of children, sometimes very young, as well as countless abductions and attacks on schools, reported cases of sexual violence against girls, including forced marriages and rapes at areas of conflicts. The standard of education is dropping drastically, for instance, Out of the 14,784 Students segregated into 10,807 Males and 3,977 Females, who sat for the West African Examination Council Examination in Yobe in 2015, only 646 or 4.37% got the required 5 credits.

The petty traders could hardly manage their business due to insecurity,  ignorance, and pressure in meeting the needs of their large family. The unemployed youths and girls/women engage in social menace that destroys new generations, reduce social/economic well-being, increasing inequality in the society thereby inducing early marriage, perpetuating a high level of unemployment and poverty, thus, affecting all our communities’ aspects of life.

According to President Kim of World Bank, “it is time to bend the arc of history” and virtually eliminate extreme poverty worldwide. One way to get to the 3% by 2030 target rate that this goal implies is by having GDP per capita in all countries grow with 4.2% a year and having inequality within countries remain unchanged. This is about the rate at which household incomes in the developing world have been growing during the last decade, and which has been the basis for setting the target at this level. Though it is ambitious, the goal is not out of reach. And yet, the analysis in Africa’s Pulse shows that under these optimistic assumptions, the poverty rate in Sub-Saharan Africa would be above 16% in 2030 – that is, one in six Africans would still be living in extreme poverty. In other words, faster reduction in poverty will require growth with equity.”

Avabe Initiative believes that the high level of illiteracy and poverty invariably affects all our communities’ aspects of life being health, food, environment, technological advancement, governance, and Security.

Lack of structural systems in schools, literacy and vocational centers and Local Government Area (LGA) level to build capacity/knowledge of teachers, attendees and staff is another problem that requires intervention.

In view of these antecedents, we aim to increase the number of literates and improve standard of education through our innovative special learning and adult centers; create means of sponsorship of future generations to the families through capacity and empowerment of girls of age 9-18; youths and young adult women and men aged 17-49 that will support Educating Women for Turn Around (EW4TA), which forms our overall goals.

Project Description

EW4TA is a project designed to provide special learning, basic literacy, numeracy, and capacity building to underprivileged citizenry especially, girls of school age 9 to 18 years old, young males, women aged 18 to 49 and children, not in school. The literacy and non-formal education is the foundation process of the project towards creating a sustainable livelihood for the beneficiaries to enable them to become self-productive/employable, reliant, employer and trainers to others. The project is aimed to continue revolving in the provision of services, awareness and as an innovation and agent of change in the communities.

To achieve this, Avabe Initiative has 4 outputs through which it works with educational institutions, media houses, focal groups, and traditional/religious leaders, government agencies/ministries and NGOs. The outputs with their tasks/activities are highlighted below:

Next Steps…

While we remain committed to the transformational and sustainable services that will nurture and improve the lives of our inhabitants and develop the communities, we leave our doors widely open for possible collaborations, capacity building and to receive grants opportunities that will further strengthen our efforts.

Call to Action