Archives for 2017

Vital Voices Network: 5 funding and grant opportunities for 2017

08.17.17

Vital Voices recently announced 3 huge funding and grant opportunities. Here they are:

(1) Investing in Your Big Idea: We encourage women who want to take on a bold new project, launch a new initiative, want to grow their impact or their own personal leadership, or have a collaboration idea with a fellow VV100 Member, to apply.

Vital Voices and Johnson & Johnson will work with ten VV100 women leaders who will receive intensive, individualized support; the most prominent element being year-long mentorship from senior Johnson & Johnson executives, as well as access to Johnson & Johnson company expertise.

PLEASE NOTE, you can already have begun doing this work but need further support. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO START A NEW PROJECT. This program will take place in November, 2017 in New York/New Jersey. For more details about the program please follow this link. Applications are due no later than AUGUST 31^st.

(2) Crowdsourced Capacity Building/Skills Based Training: We will convene 10-15 VV100 women leaders for a capacity building and networking program from October 8^th – 12^th in Brazil.

Network members interested in participating are asked to submit a proposal outlining the purpose and theme of the gathering in collaboration with AT LEAST ONE other network member.

We encourage you to be creative. Do you want skills based training in a particular area, do you want to build a cohort within VV100 around a specific issue are area or region?

We want your ideas and we want you to collaborate! PLEASE NOTE, this application is NOT intensive. We are looking for proposals that outline an idea or a concept.

You DO NOT need to create an entire program, agenda or curriculum. Johnson & Johnson will work closely with Vital Voices to engage experts at every level of the company from across the globe to provide expertise and support. For more details about the program please follow this link. Applications are due no later than AUGUST 31^st.

(3) Partner on a Proposal to NoVo Foundation: The NoVo Foundation has announced The Radical Hope Fund, an opportunity to fund creative ideas to solve critical challenges around injustice and systems breakdowns, with a focus on women and girls, and other marginalized communities.

Vital Voices will be submitting a proposal to build programming to support VV100 and the Global Leadership Network. We would love to do this WITH you!

If you have an idea for a project or initiative in your community with which you could partner with Vital Voices and/or the Network, please send it to us.

We obviously cannot promise that we can include everything but we will try our hardest to create broad categories of support to include as many as possible. Please see below for a list of areas of focus from NoVo Foundation.

· Bringing communities together for cross-issue, cross-sectoral organizing that centers feminist leadership, including but not limited to policy advocacy campaigns

· Global solidarity and transnational movement-building connecting issues and movements that are aligned in their purpose and vision

· Leveraging the power of media, culture, and the arts to engage in storytelling and share ideas, moving hearts and minds for change, including creating new strategic platforms and collaboration between artists/culture-makers and movement organizations

· Seeding experiments in building new structures and systems to propel us into a world that is oriented around interdependence, mutuality, and love rather than domination and extraction, with an emphasis on cultivating local, community-driven solutions

PLEASE SUBMIT YOUR IDEA TO VITAL VOICES BY SEPTEMBER 4^th. Please submit answers to the following questions to LaurenWollack@vitalvoices.org.

Please keep in mind the overall application is meant to be a concept note. We want your big idea and the concept for execution.

You do NOT need to submit a long, detailed proposal to VV. Each of your answers can be up to 200 words long.

· Name, country, organization you would use to implement project

· Executive summary of your idea

· Goals and intended outcomes

· What challenges currently exist that makes this critical:

· How long the project/initiative would last (up to 5 years)

· General milestones

· How VV and/or the Network would be involved and support.

· Budget (broken down by year)

(4) Network Leadership: Vital Voices will send applications to become a leader of the Global Leadership Network to represent issue areas, regions, technical Network needs and more. These leaders will be tasked with identifying needs, engaging the Global Leadership Network, strategizing with Vital Voices and more. In Spring/Summer, 2018, we will gather these Network Leaders to strategize the future of the VV Network. MORE TO COME SOON.

(5) Ongoing Individual Support: Beyond the above programs, we will also offer individual support to each of you throughout the year. Each of you will be assigned a POC who will connect you to opportunities that advance your top goals for the next year. A member of the ISI team will reach out to you soon to discuss next steps around providing individual support. We are currently working with Johnson & Johnson to create opportunities for VV100 to seek needs-based support for personal and/or professional growth, organizational capacity and technical support. Johnson & Johnson is a global company with over 100,000 employees. They have expertise in every region of the world across sectors and industries. We are thrilled that they are opening up the company and all it has to offer to you as a core component of their employee engagement strategy.

If you have questions or concerns, please feel free to reach out to Vital Voices

KIND Youth beneficiaries march with WARDC and Purple Nigeria on IWD 2017

06.22.17

Beneficiaries of KIND leadership programmes in universities and polytechnics around Lagos joined Women Advocates Research and Documentation Centre (WARDC) and Purple Nigeria on a road walk for the International Women’s Day, March 8, 2017.

They marched from Ikeja Under Bridge to Lagos State Government House to discuss issues of concern affecting women in the state in commemoration of International Women’s Day but were disappointed when Governor Akinwumi Ambode did not meet with them.

March 8 of every year was set aside by the United Nations (UN) as international women’s day, to celebrate achievements of women all over the world. It is also a day to draw global attention to issue of rights of women.

At Alausa, the seat of power in Lagos, the women were stopped at the gate leading to the governor’s office by security operatives and, after waiting for an hour, marched to the House of Assembly to see Speaker Mudashiru Obasa.

Below are some pictures:

KIND LEADERSHIP PROGRAMME IN UNIVERSITIES AND POLYTECHNICS

06.22.17

LEADERSHIP PROGRAMME IN UNIVERSITIES AND POLYTECHNICS

In partnership with the UK Department for International Development (DFID) through Voices for Change (now Purple) KIND was able to improve the Leadership, Decision making and Life-Skills competencies of adolescent boys and girls between the ages of 16 – 25 in University of Lagos (UNILAG) and Lagos State Polytechnic (LASPOTECH).

We employed the use of interactive virtual and physical platforms, referred to as ‘safe spaces’ in the school training. Over 450 young people have benefited from the leadership development programme in both schools and we are still in the process of training more.

PICTURE OF THE TRAINED STUDENTS:

Students on the programme’s impact

Buki Temitope, one trained female student said ‘The training has helped me to develop my leadership skill and made me more assertive’

Oyewunmi Waliu, one of the trained boys said ‘The training made me understand the true meaning of Gender and gender equality and also know how to convince my colleagues not to practice violence against women’

KIND Child Rights Project in Kano State

06.22.17

Child Rights Project (Kano State)

This is a European Union (EU) sponsored project. KIND partnered with VSO International Nigeria to carry out the project in Kano State. The Objective of this initiative is to strengthen local child rights focused based civil society organizations and promote the effective civil society and community action as an effective force in fostering an enabling environment for the passage of the Child Rights Act in the state.

We equipped 40 students and 32 teachers in 16 schools from 6 Local Government Areas in Kano State and Kano State-based CSOs on the basic requirements of child rights.

12 facts about June 12 and Abiola’s death

06.12.17

Chief Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola, CFR was born on August 14, 1937 and died under suspicious circumstances on July 7, 1998.

He is often referred to as M. K. O. Abiola, a popular Nigerian Yoruba businessman, publisher, politician and aristocrat of the Yoruba Egba clan.

He ran for the presidency in 1993, and is widely regarded as the presumed winner of the inconclusive election since no official final results were announced.

Across Nigeria today, at least 6 states in the Southwest have declared June 12 a public holiday and are holding ceremonies in his honour.

Below are facts about the day:

1. Several of those involved in the election are dead

MKO Abiola died in detention in 1998. Justice Bassey Ikpeme, who gave the controversial order stopping the election, died in 1997.

Mr Clement Akpamgbo, the attorney general and minister of justice who was involved in the legal tussles, died in 2006.

Admiral Augustus Aikhomu, the then second-in-command to General Ibrahim Babangida, who famously said Abiola could not be sworn in as president because government was owing him a lot of money, died in 2011.

2. The celebration lasted only two hours

Following the election victory, most Nigerians celebrated in the streets. However on that fateful day, 24 years ago, the celebrations were short-lived as two hours later, the military declared the election results annulled.

3. No Hausa or Fulani politicians featured on the tickets

Strangely, the 1993 elections had no person of Hausa or Fulani blood picked as presidential or vice-presidential candidate. Alhaji Bashir Tofa is a Kanuri from Kano.

Alhaji Babagana Kingibe, a Kanuri from Borno State, was Abiola’s running mate. However, after the annulment, the Hausa/Fulani bore the brunt.

4. Abiola won the election

This is not surprising, but it is quite important to know that he won the election, fair and square. Abiola scored 58.36% of the 14 million votes cast.

His rival, Tofa, polled 5,952,087 votes, representing 41.64%. Only three states each returned more than 1 million votes, all southern: Lagos, Rivers (now Rivers and Bayelsa) and Ondo.

5. He received the highest votes in Lagos state

Abiola received his highest votes from Lagos state. He smiled home with 883,965. Ondo State (now Ondo and Ekiti) delivered a total of 883,024 votes, which gave Lagos a good run for its money.

6. The Southwest were behind him

Abiola scored more than 80% in each of the five south-western states: Lagos, Ondo, Oyo, Osun and Ogun State. Osun’s 87% was his highest percentage nationwide.

His 78% in Kwara was his highest outside of the south-west.

7. His rival scored poorly

Tofa did not score up to 80% in any state. He came close to that in Sokoto where he got 79%. Incidentally, Abiola scored his worst percentage in Sokoto (20%).

Tofa, however, did not score up to 70% in any other state after Rivers.

8. June 12 should be a national holiday

Many Nigerians are of the opinion that June 12 should be a national holiday. The date is celebrated in honour of an annulled presidential election in June 12, 1993. However, only some Nigerian states actually celebrate it.

9. Babangida’s role

The election was annulled by Ibrahim Babangida, because of alleged evidence that they were corrupt and unfair, a development that ushered in a political crisis that led to General Sani Abacha seizing power later that year.

10. Abiola declared himself president

In 1994, Abiola declared himself the lawful president of Nigeria in the Epetedo area of Lagos island, an area mainly dominated by Lagos Indigenes, after he returned from a trip to solicit the support of the international community for his mandate.

After declaring himself president he was declared wanted and was accused of treason and arrested on the orders of military President General Sani Abacha, who sent 200 police vehicles to bring him into custody.

11. Abiola’s death

Abiola died on July 7, 1998 on the day he was due to be released from incarceration under suspicious circumstances shortly after the death of General Abacha.

The official autopsy stated that Abiola died of natural causes, but Abacha’s chief security officer, Al-Mustapha alleged he was beaten to death.

12. The fairest election till date

The election was declared Nigeria’s freest and fairest presidential election by national and international observers, with Abiola even winning in his Northern opponent’s home state. June 12 is thus a day to remember chief Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola as well as other democracy martyrs.

KIND officials visit schools involved in alleged rape case

05.18.17

Two program officers from KIND visited the two schools whose students were involved in the alleged Ikoyi gang rape; Ireti Senior School and Falomo Senior Secondary school, on May 11, 2017.

The principal of Falomo senior school (the school whose girls were sexually molested) was not available for questioning, while that of Ireti school whose male students were accused of harassment and rape refused to talk about the issue. He denied its occurrence, saying it was neither his school nor his students.

According to him, his students are good, well behaved, and always come back with medals from competitions.

On sensing our hesitation to leave without answers, he directed us to the office of the Tutor General of their district (district 1), but not without first telling us that he does not have first hand information as the matter of concern didn’t happen within the school’s premises.

On getting to the Tutor General’s office, the secretary directed us to the office of the Deputy Governor of Lagos state, stating that’s where the case is being handled.

Although before meeting with the principal, we had overheard some teachers discussing updates on the case. We found out that the case is already in court, and 5 male students who were accused of being the ring leaders have been arraigned in court where they pleaded not guilty to the allegations.

They were subsequently granted bail, and the case was adjourned to 14th June, 2017.

Leaving the school’s premises, we spoke with some residents of the area and we were told that was not the first time such is happening around the school community. “Boys from both schools always harass the girls of the schools after school hours.”

We will be in court on June 14, 2017 to follow up on the case.