nikki's Blog

Regular followers of our Wednesday meetings will realise that we can never predict exactly what will unfold. Predictably, this week was no exception. Despite travelling, John was fully apprised of events at Fantsuam Foundation and joined the Skype meeting to fill us in. His first input was to let the UK team know that no-one else from Fantsuam would be online - because they were in the middle of some exciting developments. These centred around a huge effort to get their new Community Communication Centre up and running. New equipment ordered from the US had just arrived, so workers were...

Today's online meeting illustrated perfectly the type of difficulties which can potentially beset our weekly Skype link-ups between Nigeria and the UK. It first became apparent that all was not well after we were joined in the session by Bala, Manager of Zittnet and a regular team member. The Nigerian team quickly explained that they were experiencing problems with their network. In fact, they had identified the presence of unusual traffic from an external client and - fearing this could mean a viral or hacking attack - had chosen to block the "intruder" for safety. A low-key and unremarkable event...

During the course of Wednesday's UK-Nigeria meeting, we found ourselves contemplating the realities of education at Fantsuam. For that was among the traditionally vast range of topics covered in a session which also spanned everything from Sickle Cell Disease to Mozzi-Mort ! It was interesting to learn that students at Fantsuam are being introduced to Twitter on the diploma course. However, concern was naturally raised that, once they leave the academy, they either competely lose internet access or can - at best - expect very limited online opportunities. John consulted the team and, as ever, a possible solution was suggested...

Sickle Cell Awareness day was created by the United Nations to recognise Sickle Cell Disease as a global health crisis. Member states were urged to raise awareness of this terrible genetic disease on June 19 each year. And John Dada and his team at Fantsuam Foundation have already started to action this call. At yesterday's weekly UK/Nigeria Dadamac team meeting, John explained that a SCD support meeting had been held at Fantsuam last Saturday . A documentary in collaboration with the Abuja SC Support group is being prepared for showing on this year's Global SC Day. Those interested can view...