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The Rotary Club of Ikeja, Lagos, has empowered residents of its adopted communities. The event marked the beginning of the Rotary calendar year, which starts every July.
Its president, Olumuyiwa Fagbola, explained that the club was donating vocational tools and distributing micro-credit interest free loan of N25,000 each to 40 beneficiaries. The beneficiaries are market men and women of Isolo community.
He said the club in the past offered loan totalling N500,000 paid back on a quarterly basis: “But for this year, with the support of ERITH Foundation, we have moved it to N1million. The projects are in line with the theme of the new year as announced by the Rotary International President, 2019-2020, Mark Daniel Maloney with the theme: Rotary Connects the World.”
He noted that the increase in the amount of money being offered as loan has made it possible to increase the number of beneficiaries. He said in the case of the traders, the selection of beneficiaries was done through the leader of the market who also ensured the money is returned as at when due:
“We have some beneficiaries, who are being trained in vocational centres but don’t have the money to buy equipment. What we have done is to ensure we provide the equipment for them to make them self-employed and add value to their lives.”
The club also donated hair driers, sewing machines, washing machines and grinding machines to the Rotary Vocational Centre in Ikorodu, the Nigerian Air force Officer’s Wives Association (NAFOWA), Vocational and ICT Centre, Ikeja, Agidingbi community and FSD Vocational Centre.
The District Governor, Jide Akeredolu, disclosed that the district is embarking on cervical cancer prevention project and the eradication of poverty in Lagos and Ogun states: “Cervical cancer is the second killer after breast cancer and research has shown that it kills 26 people everyday but the good news is that it can be prevented by vaccination.
“We want to build and start a new generation of women free from cervical cancer. The journey of a thousand miles start from the first step. We will start and I believe over the years we will get there.
“Ten years ago, it was in China and India but now we have extremely poor people than both China and India combined together. In this category, we talked about people who are at the bottom of the barren, they don’t have any visible accommodation, and they use about 80 per cent of their income just to feed. We have them everywhere and before you know it becomes a vicious cycle.
“What we want to do is to identify these people, bring them out, put them in a good shelter, give them a skill, give them a stipend because usually when you put these people in for vocational training, they don’t stay there because they were struggling to live every day and after we do that, we will set them up.
“We are taking up challenging area of our national life for Rotary to address it, we use to do simple things in the past, boreholes, renovation but we are now going into the deep issues affecting the less privilege in our society.”
