Back again

Finally an update about my work again. This time it didn’t take me long to write because I didn’t have any work but because I had too much work. I have never been as busy as I am right now during my whole stay in Nigeria. Now I am the national coordinator of the NGVP I first of all have to travel quite often and second of all I meet interesting people. ‘High up people’ as we would say in The Netherlands.

For example in December I had the honor to meet the new Commissioner of Nassarawa State while I was hospitalized. And I have regular phone calls with the executive director of the Science and Technical School Board. I have to see if I can arrange meetings with them and invite them for workshops I have to organize. Wow ….. who would have ever thought that I would be capable of managing stuff like this.

Just last week I went for an advocacy visit back to Ilorin, I had arranged 3 meetings to promote and re-sell the NGVP to the Ministry of Education and Human Capital Development, the Ministry of Sports and Youth development and CSACEFA (an umbrella organization for all NGO’s and CSO’s working for education). All meetings went well after some rescheduling.

Short list of outcome:

·         Federal Minister of Youth Development is the former Commissioner of Education in Kwara so I should try to get the Federal Ministry involved in the programme so they can strengthen the connection with NYSC HQ and on State level.

·         I have to send an official letter to CSACEFA with a summary of what we discussed about what they can do for NGVP and what we offer in the NGVP programme.

·         CSACEFA will do strong advocacy for the NGVP in the Ministry of Education and use their connections to work together to get a fair selection and recruitment system.

·         CSACEFA appointed Public Relation Officer Adejo as the contact person for NGVP in Kwara and they offer to support Matthew to do the monitoring (and might offer him a job to be support officer in Kwara)

·         CSACEFA will also help pushing the Ministry of Youth and Ministry of Education to arrange employment for NGVP volunteers.

·         Olusoji Sogunno (CSACEFA Kwara coordinator) said he might pop by in the workshop in Abuja if he is around to see some volunteers and talk to them.

During this visit I also met someone, I think from Osun State, who really was interested in the NGVP. He said it would be the perfect opportunity for the State to fight the unemployment and poor education. I agreed with him but also had to say that our country strategy doesn’t allow us to work with partners in Osun. A pity isn’t it. A State that might be very interested and supportive of what we do cannot get our help. But then again we cannot work in all States.

Then today I met the executive director of an big NGO in Abuja who already started a community teachers project in the FCT. Very interesting. I hope to get a better meeting soon to see if we can support eachother. I really believe in this project and I hope I will be able to leave a legacy behind when I leave this country in June. A good project with proper out lines and good frameworks for which (inter)national volunteers will be working with pride.