How We Help

Saving lives at birth

Maternal mortality—the death of women during pregnancy, childbirth, or in the 42 days after delivery—remains a major challenge to health systems worldwide. Nigeria’s maternal mortality ratio of 840 per 100,000 live births is one of the highest in Africa with 65% of this coming from the rural areas.

At Serendipity we seek to identify and address the barriers to improved maternal care and to address them, thereby reducing maternal morbidity and mortality in Nigeria. A holistic package using Role Model Mothers, Pregnant Women Peer Support Groups, provision of equipment and commodities, capacity building and attitudinal re-orientation and motivation of healthcare workers are designed to ensure that lives are saved at birth. The aim of the project is to increase antenatal clinic attendance by at least 50%, and also improve the attitude of healthcare providers to encourage pregnant women to return to the facility to be attended to by skilled birth attendants while in labor.

Wealth Creation

Crop farmers in Kano state are mostly small scale women farmers and as such typically sell their produce without processing. This is because of a lack of equipment and knowledge on processing. In addition, because of weather conditions, lack of storage capacity, and the often urgent need for cash, our farmers try to sell their produce to avoid spoilage. This has led to low and reduced income accruing to these farmers who are mostly women.

The women of Tofa who are our target beneficiaries are challenged with limited leadership and group management skills because they are not in a formal organised group and not trained in group formation and dynamics. This denies them a platform for disclosing the existing gaps in as far as planning and budgeting for vulnerable groups is concerned and a hindrance to business and job creation. They lack the practical technical knowledge and skills of processing because they have not been trained in this aspect of the value chain before. This hinders them from turning their raw produce into other processed products.

The women also have limited access to financial support for entrepreneurship development. It is therefore important to note that the women fear loans because they have no knowledge of loan management and other sources of funding to grow their business, this limits them from tapping the existing funding and grant opportunities from government and other development institutions which denies them the chance to initiate and implement businesses thus widening the unemployment gap leading to abject poverty.

Since COVID19 pandemic, access to input has been almost impossible and supply chain broken thus causing an increasing rate of food scarcity, inorder to curb the rise of increase in costs, we have embarked upon finding innovative methods of agriculture thus training of women and youths in batches over the course of five years.

Clean water for all

The rural and urban poor living in Nigeria face water and sanitation challenges, particularly related to accessibility and safety. For instance, women and girls walk on average 6 kilometers to fetch water from rivers, streams and unprotected springs that are often known to be unsafe for consumption or are forced to buy over-priced and barely palatable water from vendors. There simply are no alternatives!

SHF is facilitating with the help of donations from private organizations, donors, charitable organizations e.t.c. are providing access to safe drinking water, sanitation facilities, hygiene practices and basic healthcare services to rural communities. How? Through citation/construction of handheld pumps, community training on maintenance of the handheld pumps and on hygiene practices targeted towards women and children such as hand washing, water management, proper refuse disposal, environmental sanitation, home management of malaria, and what to do when there is no doctor around.

This is social empowerment, economic empowerment and health empowerment. But most importantly, it's targeted at gender empowerment. From an initial start up programme of 50 women and children from Kumbotso local government area, SHF now runs programmes that have reached across 577,000 people from five local government areas with an estimated population of 50,670 each from a ward (rural community).

Adopt a Girl

There are 10.5 - 13.5 million out of school children in the Northern part of Nigeria and out of these more than 75% are females. The COVID 19 pandemic has further worsened the situation as 50% of these girls' have been married off. At Serendipity, we strive with the help of donations to ensure these girls return back to school and finish secondary school, we do this through getting scholarships for these girls to tackle poverty and gender inequality by increasing also the number of girls enrolled in schools between the ages of 5 - 19 in our rural communities in Kano, Nigeria from current 20% to 50% by the next term which starts in the second quarter of 2021.

Making Our Schools WASH Friendly

Nigeria has been listed amongst the top ten in practicing open defecation which leads to ailments especially in our rural communities where they do not have basic infrastructure such as access to water and sanitation facilities. We have a goal to ensure that our country is taken off the list and thus we are targeting schools so that a behavior change will start with our children and schools and thus extend to our communities. Workshops will be conducted where selected schools will be trained on good handwashing practices, shown pathways of fecal transmission and how to stop them and building child friendly toilets.

Results

As of 2020, the reach of our hygiene and sanitation programme as well as provision of handheld pumps has grown from 50 women and children to 577,000 community members, capacity building of birth attendants from 5 to 25 traditional birth attendants and community health workers, distribution of Insecticide Treated Nets to currently 250 households. And these programmes has affected the lives of the community members in invaluable ways. The results so far have inspired SHF to expand its current existing programs in Kano to neighbouring states of Northern Nigeria as well as spread its model of integrated programmes throughout the country.