LEADERSHIP INITIATIVES COMMUNITIES

Our programs have a ripple effect throughout their host communities. As individual beneficiaries become more self-sufficient, they provide much-needed goods and services to the surrounding community at affordable prices.

Their children become free to attend school, their families are better nourished and they are able to improve their homes and neighborhoods. As their skills grow and develop they pass that training on to others, thus magnifying the reach of each development program.

The Birshi Community
The Birshi Community The entire village of Birshi has been integral to the success of the fish farming initiative from its inception. Use of the land on which the holding tanks now stand was donated as a result of early stage design meetings with village leaders. And the project's initial participants were chosen through community-based committees. Various members of the village have assisted our farmers in establishing a stable market for the fish, while the farmers themselves have contributed the smaller fish to sick and elderly villagers.

Morale throughout the village has improved as families have been able to make much-needed home repairs, build new homes, and send their children to school. By seeking community involvement from the earliest stages, our student leaders have been able to build on and strengthen the existing leadership structure in the village while developing independence and self-reliance in individual farmers.

YELWAN MAKARANTA COMMUNITY
In Yelwan Makaranta, our student leaders sought the support of local leaders in designing a program that would efficiently match accessible skill sets with existing community needs. Unemployed youth were brought into the dialogue as potential participants and it was their input that led to the selection of welding, tailoring, and motorcycle repair for our apprenticeships. Because the demand for those skills is so great within the region, our trainees have enjoyed full employment immediately on graduation.

As a result their immediate and extended families are eating and living better, while the community as a whole is strengthened by the infusion of affordable local services. Taxi drivers are able to keep their motorcycles running, families are making long-overdue repairs to the metal doors and gates which keep their homes secure, and high quality traditional clothing is now accessible to families of limited means. Yelwan Makaranta is flourishing and growing because individual members of the community are becoming more self-sufficient.

Bauchi Community
Disabled individuals have very few opportunities for meaningful employment in Bauchi. Without marketable skills or the respect of the surrounding community, they are often reduced to depending upon handouts for their support. Our student leaders recognized that both the community and its disabled citizens would benefit from a more productive integration. Our partners at Challenge Your Disability Initiative (CYDI) identified computer literacy training as both accessible to those with a wide range of physical limitations and sorely needed in the surrounding community. By capitalizing on our existing partnership with Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University, our student leaders were able to provide both the computer training itself and a suitable location in which it to conduct it.

The CYDI community selected our participants and provided them with technical assistance and basic computing facilities upon graduation. Each trainee has achieved new independence while providing much-needed typing, binding, and laminating services to the larger community. As our graduates have developed marketable skills their families and neighbors have begun to see them with new eyes and their disabled peers now look to them for inspiration and instruction as they seek to broaden their own horizons.