By Ibrahim Hassan-Wuyo

The Country Director, Global Peace Foundation Nigeria(GPFN),Reverend John Joseph Hayab,has said that the foundation came up with a concept to foster unity and empower women economically for peace communities.

The GPFN therefore, doled out N1million to women in Hayin Banki cooperative societies to enable them start business and become self reliant.

While speaking to journalists after he donated the money at the Bajju Hall I’m Hayin Banki Kaduna, Rev. Hayab said they started the project in 2024 and have come to this community virtually every month in the last 10 to 12 calendar month either engaging the beneficiaries on conflict analysis, non-violent communication, freedom of religious believe and everything that matters to build their capacity to know how to mitigate whatever comes their way in the future.

He said, “to culminate this activity, we introduced an economic aspect of it where we train them in literacy, value chain analysis and other things.”

“What are we trying to do; we just feel strongly that our women need to be empowered because one of the serious causes of violence or conflict is poverty and if you empower women with knowledge and financially, the impact is beautiful and goes beyond them entirely and so we formed them into cooperative societies.”

“What we did today was to set up 5 commissioned cooperative societies with 20 women each and them gave them a capital of N1 million (N200, 000) per cooperative to start because we want to see a future where the voice of the women will be heard, their roles as mothers and influencers in the communities would be respected and then we begin to have young children who listen to their mothers, a community where peace is the watch word everyday because we see women playing multifaceted roles, this is why we introduced this.”

“We have done this in many communities in the country and we hope it will continue to be felt in every part of Kaduna state and the country at large.”

On his expectations, he said, “We want to see financial independence, we want to see peaceful coexistence, we want to see value and respect for humanity and we want to see people living with social cohesion, a situation where everybody is living and seeing the other person as part of his family because some of us grew up in communities like these and we know what it meant when people grew up respecting one another and what we are seeing today is not what we want for our children.”

Sheikh Haliru Abdullahi Maraya, Northern Coordinator, GPFN said in an interview that the foundation decided to conduct the program in nooks and crannies in the country with a view to alleviating the poverty situation in Nigeria.

He linked the preponderance of criminality to poverty and maintained that “there is a monitoring machinery in motion to ensure that the beneficiaries make judicious use of the grant because it is not a loan.”

He said the program will succeed as “the community under the Village Head will be closely monitored.”

Elizabeth Hassan, Coordinator, Bethel Candle of Hope for the Vulnerable, said they collaborated with GPFN to anchor the activity, adding that women were the target “because the woman is the center of every family”.

Malam Mahmud Galadima, Village Head of Hayin Banki commended the initiative which he said, would go a long way in combating poverty in the community.

He said the community had worked hand in hand with the foundation to ensure the project succeeds and appealed to the beneficiary to make a better use of the opportunity.