The topics covered in this week’s UK-Nigeria meeting ranged from solar power to maize with a bit of microfinance and minority languages thrown in for good measure!
Following on from last week’s update
about the visit from the Minnesota team (MRES) John Dada was able to give us the exciting news that some of the participants attending the solar workshop decided they would start a Kafanchan Solar Club, KSC. John will be helping the temporary officials of the KSC (Naomi ,Gabriel ) together with Kasang to send Dadamac UK a few sentences about and photos of the newly formed club.
John shared with us the belief that the Minnesota team thinks that Fantsuam Foundation should write a book about its experiences. The saying ‘ great minds think alike’ came to mind as that was something that Frances was hoping to do! I personally think that a month long documentary of Fantsuam Foundation would give a rare and valuable insight into the importance of integrated development and highlight many issues of international development.
John informed us that FF academy has been the most viable unit in FF since the Kafanchan crisis. He went on to say that the clinic cannot yet generate enough income to pay its staff, not to mention the drugs etc. John also confirmed that some of the student fees especially students with disabilities and the Kakas programme were being funded by personal donations.
Fantsuam had a visit from Tunde Adegbola the previous week. He was accompanied by a staff member of the University at Inverness who is looking for possible partner for language localization. John and Fantsuam have already been involved in the Zitt Localization Project as mentioned. John has previously been interested in protecting threatened minority languages.
(Zitt = Ours in the Kafanchan language )
Additional news:
John was able to tell us that “The dry season irrigated maize has been doing well on the Attachab farm” and that FF “recently did a follow up of the children who were screened during the sickle cell work last year. Some have become displaced due to the Kaf crises, and we can’t trace them. Almost none of them is attending any regular clinic”.
Ron Dennis has approved FF’s nomination of Linus Nok as the the researcher for the proposed Comic Relief plastic recycling project .John informed us that he will be meeting Linus later that night to discuss the entire project with him.
Photo shows the training at Fantsuam Academy using JAWS a software programme to assist visually impaired students to use a computer. Photo from Cicely VSO Fantsuam 2010