Developments at Fantsuam

Despite being in Abuja, John Dada was able to come online to greet us during this week’s UK-Nigeria meeting.
John had been asked by a representative of the Michigan State University to discuss starting a dry run of the Fantsuam Foundation’s Zipak Laboratory next week (pictured above) and was in discussions in Abuja to do this.

John also shared with us the following updates via email.

• Both PATHS and ESSPIN programs are continuing apace. Comfort added that the PATHs team is on mentoring visits and ESSPIN starts activities again next week.
• The Clinic expansion work being sponsored by the American Embassy has started. The foundations have been completed and Comfort was able to reassure us that the rains should not affect the building works.
• Attachab: Informed us that they should be able to mount the large water tanks for the Attachab borehole sometime this week
• Mr Shinggu, a member of the Fantsuam Board of Directors, arrived this week at Fantsuam to provide leadership in the FF admin section which among a myriad of duties John has been supervising. He will be with Fantsuam for a couple of months. In fact the team were delighted that Mr Shinggu was able to join us in our meeting. Previously Mr Shinggu had been a regular attendee at our meetings and his wisdom and insights had been much appreciated so we are delighted that he will be online with us for the coming weeks.
• The Fantsuam Cooperative is now a member of the Nigerian Small Scale Industries Association. NASSI assists its members to access low interest investment loans
• NASSI. John went on to tell us that they would like to incubate some small scale industries as part of promoting economic recovery of Kafanchan. They are looking at Catfish Hatchery management and fish feeds production; solar chargers for mobile phones and local assembly of solar fridges for vaccine storage (this is a follow up on the Minnesota team training at Fantsuam) and a third local industry is the demand for ice blocks in the hot season. Ice blocks are used to keep foods and drinks cool for the families who have no refrigerators or for everybody else who have fridges, but no grid power.
• Current security situation: John informs us that: “The spate of bombings are certainly on the decline, taking place sporadically, and are few and far between. The extremists are either getting arrested or they are giving up; either is good news for us.