Just before the start of this week’s UK-Nigeria online meeting, John Dada emailed photos of the recent floods around Fantsuam Foundation. These illustrated why the FastTractor was unable to work for a while.
General news and catch up:
- “Comfort attended an entrepreneurship training in Kaduna on behalf of Fantsuam Foundation, and she has come to Fantsuam to do a step down. We expect up to 10 young women to attend.”
- The launch of the World Ageing Report published by HelpAge International
- was very successful. “We managed to get lots of media coverage, including a BBC World Service programme reading out some of the quotes from Nigeria”
- A volunteer from the UK is working with the Microfinance to sort out their work plan and budget for 2013. It was also arranged that when the UK team meets with Linus (the Fantsuam engineer seconded to City Uni as part of the comic relief waste plastic recycling programme) that they will give him a cd of the Mifos software.
- John shared with us his vision and objectives for 2013:
1. Re-organizing microfinance to become more savings-led, so that clients save for life cycle events such as Eid, Xmas, weddings, Graduation, School fees, etc
2. Helping low income people to manage their money and build a useful lump sum
3. Miro-insurance as a new product for our clients. The aftermath of the Kafanchan crisis shows that some form of insurance could have helped in the reconstruction/ recovery period. Most people have no insurance
4. Develop Full implementation Plan for Attachab's various services: Fisheries, Piggery, Goats and Sheep, Orchard, Medicinal Plants, Yam mini-setts, Bee-keeping, Dry season Farming, Climate mitigation practices (drainage, rainwater collection etc) and all of these underpinned by training of the host communities
5. Review Fantsuam Foundation’s web site
6. Reorganize Knowledge Resource Centre
7. Establish weekly Eye Clinic
8. Fantsuam Diabetes Clinic
9. Kafanchan market toilets - Pay-As-You-Use