My Job

A few people have asked me about my work here so I thought I' better just explain it a bit just so you all can know.

I am working for a local NGO called Family Health and Development Initiatives (FAHEDI for short). They are a small organisation based primarily in Ile-Ife and occasionally have some programs in surrounding areas. It was started in the late 90's basically by a group of academics at this university who saw a whole lot of problems and wanted to do something about it. They are mostly lecturers of health sciences, for instance my boss, who is the Executive Director and the person basically running the whole show is in the Nursing Department.

There aren't a whole lot of staff here. In fact the organisation is basically run by my boss, Mrs Lola, a program officer, Dayo, a handful of other loosely connected people including a typist, a cleaner, the resource centre operator, and the rest of the work is done my the various directors (the lecturers) and volunteers. But like I say my boss is the one who does the most and perhaps the only other person really doing a whole lot is Dayo.

So what do we do. The organisation runs a huge assortment of projects typically based on health but also some development issues. Whatever you can think of in this area they either have something going or have ideas and projects in the pipeline. So my role centres around getting involved in any and all projects that happen to be going on at the time.

For example at the moment they do things like running a monthly seminar series in secondary schools on adolescent health, run a youth organisation is each of the same schools, run a support group for people living with HIV/AIDS, operate a resource centre out of our main office, run health and education mobilisation programs in the community and in family compounds (like an extended family group), support a group of disadvantaged and disabled children, etc. etc. There are so many things I struggle to think of anything they don’t do or plan to do in this area.

Also because the directors are all health experts they are often involved in facilitating programs for other NGOs. Plus my boss seems to be on the board of an incalculable number of development and health related organisations, so there's a whole lot of networking to be done.

I am somewhat amazed the organisation does what it does sometimes because they basically have no money. Most of the money comes out of the salaries of the directors and especially my boss. I think occasionally they might get the odd grant or short-term funding but this is rare. There are some reasons for this, some of which I will tell you about when I write a little about the corruption problems.

If you have any more questions just email me.