This week’s UK-Nigeria meeting was a very special event.
It provided the UK team with a rare opportunity to meet face-to-face with John Dada, respected CEO of the Fantsuam Foundation and Dadamac Nigeria.
The meeting was kindly sponsored by London’s Westminster Hub, which very generously made its space available to us for free.
And the invited guests made the most of the opportunity by enjoying an open and wide-ranging conversation with John, who was able to offer us a unique depth of information.
Steve Podmore ably and informally interviewed John, who at one point delivered an informative history of how FF first came into being. He recounted how it was initially built on microfinance but quickly adapted and developed in response to the needs of its host community. So much so, in fact, that it is now offering integrated development programmes.
The group went on to discuss how to sustain such programmes and how to replicate such successes and, of course, share the very many lessons learned by John.
The meeting also allowed John, Ron Dennis of Developing Technologies, and a representative from Comic Relief to finalise details of the Recycling Plastic pilot project, due to start this year.
Furthermore, participants held interesting dicussions around such varied topics as microfinance, ICT4Ed, ICT4D, volunteering, e-learning and e-commerce.
Dadamac is concerned not just with information, but also with relationships between people. We hope this face-to-face meeting will increase trust and understanding and help everyone with ongoing and future collaborations - whether online or face-to-face in Nigeria.
After this thoroughly enjoyable session, we are sincerely hoping that John will be able to return to the UK in the not too distant future. It was an absolute pleasure to see him!