Can you briefly tell us about yourself?
My name is Halima Sa’eed. I am the proprietress of Nurul-Huddah Islamiyya School and also the Amira of Quismu Da’awah, meaning Da’awah section of the school in Gwagwalada Area Council of the FCT.
You have been empowering orphans through your school. What inspired this ?
Alhamdulillah, our Da’awah has so many programmes. What inspired me to empower orphans was when one of my student’s husband died. Looking at her situation, especially as she has about six children, I started thinking that it would be of benefit to give help or may be to extend our Da’awah towards helping the orphans. Her situation inspired me because of the way she was coping with the children. So we started with her and rendered assistance in terms of her children’s school fees and food and in terms of some social aspects. It was until later that we started assisting other children. We started with about four orphans and later increased it to 24, now we have about 160 orphans that we sponsor in terms of their school expenses. We assist those in government schools because we don’t have the means to sponsor those in private schools because of their charges. We have some orphans in primary school, some in junior and senior secondary schools. We have almost 160 of them and we pay their school fees and other charges. We also give them texts books, school bags, shoes, mathematical sets, pencils and biros. We normally do that after the Sallah break, before they resume school. We try to gather them and share the items to them before they resume school so that they are able to start their school without problem.
We have a different committee whose responsibility is to go round the school and pay their school fees. Initially, we started by giving the money to their mothers for their school fees but later we discovered that at times when we give the money, parents don’t pay the school fees. At the end of the day the children would be left roaming around without going to school. We therefore decided to take the responsibility of going to their various schools and paying the fees.
Tell us about the children brought to the school who have been orphaned by insurgency in Borno State and other crises in other states?
We started with the children from Borno State that were affected by the insurgency. This year’s Ramadan fasting we distributed clothes to the orphans for the Sallah celebration. It was during that period that the children were brought to us, even though we have not included them in our Islamiyya school yet but we provided them with Sallah clothes which was what made the number of the orphans to increase. Besides, some of the orphans do not live around Gwagwalada – some are in Kaduna and Katsina and some in Suleja, Niger State. Alhamdulillah we tried to make sure that we gave them Sallah clothes. Now we are trying to ensure that we help in taking them to school.
Your school also organises lectures for married women during fasting. What is your advice for women concerning raising their children well?
Under our Da’awah we normally organise lectures by educating women, especially on the Islamic aspect and that is why with this effort we try to establish seven Islamiyya schools. Because what we normally do is to find a suitable place where lectures are organised for the women on the obligatory aspect of a Muslim’s life. We always organise lectures on children because child upbringing is not an easy task. And when you look at it, most of the time our children suffer most because once they are not brought up properly, at the end of the day they end up becoming tools for politicians. We always call on the women to keep their children enlightened, to try and educate them on the need to see it as compulsory to look after the children, especially the widows who are left with the children.
It is not an easy task to see a woman left with children, she needs a lot of advices, education and counseling on the importance of looking after the children and how to bring them up. Under our Da’awah, we organise an empowerment programme which we started about three years back. We bring the women together and train them on how to make businesses like liquid soap making and knitting so that the children will not be left going about the streets. We have succeeded in that part as we even have an organisation, Abuja Enterprise Agency (AEA) that helps us with small loans to give to those women so that they will be able to do something after the training.
What is the source of funding for your philanthropic and charity activities?
The Da’awah has so many members that is why under the Islamiyya school which is across many areas within Abuja and outside the FCT, I and the other members try our possible best to ensure that we task ourselves before we call on other people to come in and assist. We have those who are well-to-do and those who are not too rich. What we normally do is that those who have the means put in what they can and those who are not up to that capacity also try to put the minimum they can afford. So that is how we raise our fund. But we also normally call other people from outside to assist us, like before the Ramadan, and immediately after the Sallah we start contributing N5,000 each to see what we can raise before the next Ramadan. And when it is about six months to Ramadan, then we start contributing clothes towards the Sallah for the orphans; and what we can do to also pay their school fees. That is how we raise funds to assist the orphans and the less privileged ones.
In fact, I commend my members of the Da’awah and students of Nurul-Huddah for putting heads together and seeing to the success of the programme.
What is your advice for Nigerians caring for the less privileged?
We will always call upon people and we will always want them to open their doors, open their hands even though I know there are so many well-to-do people in the society and they are trying their best and may Allah reward them. But we want them to do more and we want those that have the means but don’t care for the less-privileged ones to change their attitude and help them. We want them to know that one day Allah will question them and whatsoever they have will be taken from when they die so it is best they use their wealth well.
