The Strong Enough Girls’ Empowerment Initiative (SEGEI), a non-governmental organisation, is targeting 500 vulnerable households and 400 adolescent girls to be assisted with food and hygiene palliatives in different parts of Kaduna and other states.
According to Onyinye Edeh, the founder and Executive Director of SEGEI, the assistance would run for four months and is part of the empowerment and mentorship of girls and women amidst the hardship caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
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She said: “This is part of our COVID-19 Community Health & Economic Empowerment Project (CHEEP) with support from AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) and in collaboration with Stand With a Girl (SWAG) Initiative and Markengee Touching Lives International Initiative.
“The project seeks to address the immediate humanitarian, health and hygiene needs of adolescent girls, women and their families in vulnerable and marginalised communities in the Federal Capital Territory (Abuja), Kaduna and Lagos states in Nigeria.
“Recent community needs assessment revealed that adolescent girls, women and their families are in dire need of food, income, hygiene products, proper COVID-19 sensitisation and sexual and reproductive health service provision to keep them healthy.”
Edeh said it is in that regards that SEGEI is also empowering 80 petty women traders with financial seed capital of N20,000 each in consideration of the fact that “many women in rural communities are the main providers in their homes, and the current lockdown policies mean they are not able to go to work and get an income.”