Wednesday’s cordial yet highly efficient meeting reminded me of some of the Directors’ sessions involving John and Pam - only this time with the welcome addition of Frances from Fantsuam Foundation's office in Leeds, West Yorkshire.
John was the sole representative of Dadamac Nigeria as Kelechi and Ladi were travelling to Bauchi (hopefully we will learn more about this trip next week)
An article in the Vanguard had just come to my attention so I was pleased that I was able to give John and Comfort the link to the story, which concerned their work at Fansuam. John said they had tried to buy the newspaper in Kafanchan, but that the vendor did not stock it.
Atachab: John informed us they had spoken with the Songhai-trained contact the day before, and that he hopes to be back next week. Rubens will be returning to the Attachab project, but we were told he's extremely busy in Abuja at moment. As well as being one of the experts contributing to the development of the Eco-site, he is also a talented musician (currently in Abuja) and John said they are hoping Reubens will hold a concert in Kafanchan soon.
Health: Feedback was provided about the recent face-to-face meetings in London between Frances, Pam, myself, and Dadamac UK’s meeting with Pam LLewellyn who worked in Uganda as a VSO. Pam Llewellyn had experience of combating Malaria. John explained that malaria actually causes more mortality than HIV and that he would like to do more in terms of prevention and treatment. He explained that the Community Action Committees (known formally as the Community Health Committees) would be a perfect vehicle for distributing malaria education and other FF programmes to the local communities. Fantsuam were getting mosquito nets through ICAP, but we learned that this source has unfortunately dried up for now.
Frances was able to give Pamela McLean and myself copies of the book which features a chapter by John and Comfort about the use of mobile phones by women in rural Nigeria. She also had examples of the photos taken for the photo printing project. It was agreed Frances and I would work together to enable Frances to share her wonderful photos of Fantsuam on Flickr.
In addition to the above, two possible funding opportunities were briefly discussed.