The many varied concerns of Fantsuam Foundation in Nigeria:
Internet access
John had to leave the regular weekly Dadamac meeting on time in order to get to another meeting at a nearby village. An IT expert was expected from Jos to give among other things definie costs for the eqipment required for the local consortium to set up their bandwidth project. This project has been given extra impetus as the Government has made it a national requirment for all students to have internet access. It is incredible to learn that due to its enterprise and innovation, Fantsuam Foundation has better internet access in Kafanchan than some of the local teaching institutions.
Gender audit
Fantsuam Foundation is also probably ahead of the game in carrying out snd learning from a gender audit. The last audit was carried out in 2009 but Fantsuam Foundation has decided to repeat the exercise as according to John, its Director, " we want to be sure that we are true to being about the gender composition of our staff and giving access to our programmes." Among other things and like many organisations all over the world, Fantsuam has to be aware of the tendency for the more senior positions to be filled by men.
Personal Assistant
Filo whom we met last week, is settling in and seems to be beginnng to assume the responsibilities of John's personal assistant, ready to undertake any task. Dadamac is feeling the loss of Nikki in UK and the unobtrusive way she facilitated the weekly Dadamac meetings on Skype. Filo has willingly agreed to do whatever she can from 'her end' in Nigeria to ensure the meetings run smoothly. Filo is new to Fantsuam and there was an interesting discussion about how an organisation could be poor, always needing more money and resources but 'rich' in other ways.
Health issues
John told us that World Health Day will focus on the issue of hypertension and at a local event, the Fantsuam resource person will lead a discussion on locally available food that helps the elderly. Hypertension is a great concern in Nigeria an diet may be part of the problem. We will wait to hear how the discussion goes.