By PETER EGWUATU

CHESTRAD International, a non profit making organisation said it is committed to bridge poverty gap among the people in the country as inequalities in access to basic assets including education, health and productive inputs are on the rise. Speaking to newsmen in Lagos, Dr. Bimbo Ogunkelu, former Minister for Integration and Chairman of CHESTRAD said “ CHESTRAD is committed to crowd funding so that it can assist the government in its quest to alleviate poverty in Nigeria.

It is in this regard that we are inaugurating steering committee and to introduce a new philanthropic NGO, “I Will Give” to the Nigerian public. “According to him “ CHESTRAD has track record for over 25 years of its existence and perform similar work like red cross society.” In her own remark at the briefing, Dr. Lola Dare, President CHESTRAD International said “The middle class in Africa and Nigeria in particular expands almost as rapidly as its projected economic growth.

At the same time, inequalities in access to basic assets including education, health and productive inputs are on the rise. This picture is markedly demonstrated in Nigeria, home to the greatest wealth in Africa, yet also some of the most dismal levels of access to these basic services. She expanded that CHESTRAD International seeks to take advantage of this increase in wealth to utilize the capacities that exist in the middle classes for social giving.According to her “ We seek to leverage economic growth at individual and corporate level for the purpose of African social development, with activities in Nigeria in the first instance.

where need is greatest. In this effort, we also seek to pro-actively respond to the landscape for development of the 21st century, calling for more innovations in domestic financing for social development.”She stressed that overseas development budgets are shrinking, and money is being diverted to programmmes of immediate economic impact, which are desirable for overall development as countries in Africa graduate into middle income countries.

According to her “Private giving will become a critical and essential resource for good causes and inputs identified as a social good. This shift will demand a re-organization of resource mobilization and fund raising efforts of African charitable non – state organizations, who will need to tap into growing philanthropy and private giving in Africa in a more innovative way.In this regard, Dr Dare said “CHESTRAD International presents ‘I Will Give’ as an innovative platform for organized private giving in support of social development and key activities in education, health, youth development and women’s empowerment to take advantage of these resources and development.

It will provide a platform for private and corporate giving that has the potential for long-term impact on development financing in 21st century Africa.We seek not only to empower but also to enable the latent capacities that I have come to respect exist even the in the poorest of resource settings.Some of the strategic goals and objectives of the organisation, she mentioned include : Establish a platform for social giving engaging corporate social responsibility (CSR);

Organized Philanthropy and private giving; Harness subscriber contributions for the benefit of programmes which yield high social impact, with a focus on increasing human capital, supporting and nurturing productivity and maximizing the economic contribution of women and young persons; Devise effective communications and subscriber outreach programmes to sustain levels of subscription and implement a robust performance monitoring system to promote accountability and maximum utility of resources.