- NGO seek partnership
By Francis Nansak,Lafia
Women numbering 150 across 10 Communities of Toto Local Government Area in Nasarawa State have benefited from the impactful SIMBI Health Project, a non governmental organization.
The beneficiaries were transformed, educated and provided with reliefs especially in area of feeding and child birth spacing.
The women converged in a one day Dissemination Conference at Otunsha Hotel in Keffi, organized by SIMBIHEALTH Project on Saturday.
Supervisors of the various women grouping in the areas reveled that since the programme started women and the girl child has developed in health care and other essential service useful to themselves and the community.
Country Coordinator, Mr Miracle Adesina said the project started last year 2023 with the soul aim helping women to live above some of their challenges ,saying SIMBI Health has empowered the women as well as trained other to form small groupings in rural communities of Ugye, Shafa Abakpa, Shafan Koto , Gwargwada ,Toto among others .
” So since 2023 when the project started we decided to pilot it at Toto as we are targeting reaching out to other communities across the Local Government Areas of Nasarawa State.
” We started it there because from our research and findings a lot of women from the 10 Communities we have so far visited we made a lot of discoveries which the women and the girl child is still suffering.
“Some.of our findings include mutilation of genitals ,a practice which is very common in communities like Ugye, there cases of inadequacies education on family planing and lack of primary health care to sufficiently educate women on birth control ,leading to those women suffering still birth challenges.
“So in general SIMBI Health is a solution provider especially to women and the girl child in rural communities ,which we have recorded tremendous support from the rural women ,the traditional rulers , the religious leaders who have come to terms with our operations.Inspite of the initial challenges which hinges on how misinformed they were but today we can confidently said we have been able to trained, empowered and educate not less than 150 women from the ten communities visited”He said.
Also speaking in an interview, the Global Program and Policy Officer, Mary. Akinwola call for support and partnership of both the state government and stakeholders .
She pointed out that SIMBIHEALTH Project is founded with the sole aim of bridging the gap between the rich and the poor woman who hardly access social amenities ,receives poor medical attention and is denied the right to exercising her rights to participate in political and sometimes denied the privilege to be educated.
A woman leader from Kuru village ,Adama Idris thanked the SIMBI Health Project for educating women in her community ,saying that women in the past were scared of Family Planning, having the nurtion that it is a way of reducing population and to caused women suffered bleeding without childbirth,but since the project started it has help in so many issue apart from birth control , SIMBI Health has trained a lot of us into various skills.
