Empowering Futures: Investing in clean water, hygiene support for the girl child

Women and girls in rural and by extension some urban parts of Africa and Nigeria spend a considerable amount of their day travelling long distances to collect water from unsafe sources and carrying heavy jerrycans back to their families.

Their journey to find water is often through dark, unsafe environments, exposing them to threats of violence, sexual abuse and other health hazards.

Fetching water is one of the many domestic roles which are viewed as ‘women’s work’ and primarily allocated to girls and women. The long hours spent collecting water reduce the amount of time spent on education, income generation and other productive endeavours.

Easy access to simple toilet facilities and washrooms is crucial for adolescent girls to stay in school and reach their maximum potential. Safe, clean and private facilities allow girls to maintain privacy and manage menstrual hygiene, which is key to ensuring school attendance.

In a bid to address this challenge and find lasting solutions to it, Nima Memorial Care Foundation holds an annual Symposium/Grand Ball event which brings stakeholders together to speak on the issues and raise awareness and funds for the course of healthy living and access to clean water for the average person in Nigeria.

Speaking at the 3rd Nima Memorial Care Foundation’s (NMCF) 3rd annual symposium/Grand Ball event in Lagos, Zainab Abdumalik-Mohammed, co-founder, NMCF said the foundation was set up in memory of her late daughter who was very passionate about youth, particularly girl child and water, because she believed water is life and there’s nothing on earth anyone can do without water.

Abdumalik-Mohammed said her late daughter had passion for helping young children and the less privileged in the community at large.

“So she wanted to provide clean water, hygiene and also girl child hygiene during their menstrual cycle. She used to go on Okpebi Ikeja. She introduced me to the female hawkers there. She used to give the girls sanitary towels and other things before her demise,” she disclosed.

She said her daughter passed on three years ago but before that, she founded a foundation but the name of the foundation changed to Nima Memorial Care Foundation.

“Doing this event first of all was to leave a mark for her remembrance. It gives me solace to continue her passion and to also carry on looking after the less privileged, the young children, youth education. She also used to go to orphanage homes to teach them reading ethics every Saturday.

“Then every Friday she has drinking water for everybody that wants to come to the house to pick up bags of pure water. We had done boreholes in communities before her demise and we’re still doing that. We go to different states where water is needed.

“The next place we’re going back to is Kwara where water is highly needed. So we’ve done about 23 boreholes since she was alive till date. I love that organisations have continued to partner to sustain this vision that we have,” Abdumalik-Mohammed said.

She said they’ve had supplies of sanitary towels, toothbrushes, toothpaste, clothes, amongst others, adding that over 300 girls have since been impacted.

“We’ve got some schools that we also take sanitary towels to. Before my daughter’s demise, she picked girls, empowered them, trained them on makeup, hairdo, amongst others.

“We have a young boy in the hall but because he’s underage, we can’t show his face. We picked him up on the street. He’s on his way to secondary school now. So this is about the less privileged. education, girl child hygiene, and sometimes widows as well.

Speaking on the theme of the symposium, ‘Empowering Futures: Clean Water, Hygiene Support for the Girl Child,’

Anthony Kila director, Commonwealth Institute of Advanced and Professional Studies (CIAPS) said the government needs to identify that the problem exists, and not pretend that it doesn’t exist, and not lie they’ve done it, where they’ve not done anything.

“I think the government should deploy its representatives such as the national assembly, commissioners, local government officials, and indeed some civil servants, to do an audit of our communities and our areas, both local government areas, urban and rural areas, to say what is missing here.

“Once we do that audit, the next step is to look for partnership. I don’t believe in big government spending. I think communities can sit down together and say, what is it you can do? How can we help you with this? Can we look for private partnership? Can we look for different ways of funding it?

“You know, these are professors. What are they inventing? What solutions are they bringing? I think everybody needs to understand that we have a general problem, and the only way to solve it is if everybody comes together to address the challenge,” Kila explained.