Why we give women revolving loans –Hajiya Asma’u
Hajiya Asma’u Abe Wala is the founder of Az-Zawaj Women and Children Intervention Centre which seeks to address the challenges in the family and marriage system. In this interview, the retired director, Gender Department, Social Development Secretariat, F
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hat is the aim of Az-Zawaj Women and Children Intervention
The Centre’s programmes are aimed at fostering strong, productive and prosperous society through the family system. Our activities focus at promoting better and improved livelihood of families. All our programmes and interventions fall within four thematic areas which are: provision of professional guidance and counseling; support to OVC (orphans and vulnerable children) in terms of ensuring their right to quality education; initiate and undertake empowerment and support programmes for women and youths; and lastly, providing support for the aged. From these, you can see that AzZawaj is family centred.
However, the focal person of our intervention is the woman. We feel if a woman is empowered with the right information, skill and finance, the family would be the better for it and by extension, the entire society.
How do you intent empower the women?
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We have the capacity to empower as many women in dire need as possible across the country. But again, our capacity is limited to the availability of funding. We started with 25 women, but we have captured a lot more than that in our database. However, we chose to start with 25 based on the funds we were able to muster.
We are helping them with revolving loans, so that it goes round to as many as possible. Luckily for us, the first batch of beneficiaries have been very wonderful in repayment and so we intend to take on the next batch as soon as possible. On sustenance, we have several initiatives to sustain the scheme. We are optimistic that well-meaning organizations, individuals and in particular, donor agencies will buy into our initiative to ensure that this empowerment continues.
Why did you choose to support them with revolving loans?
We decided to adopt the revolving loans model because most of these women already have some form of skills and some already have petty businesses that just require some financial support to help them actualize their goals. So we felt giving them financial support to start up, or improve their petty businesses would be the best approach.
Is your marriage counseling for those about to get married or also those already married but have marital issues?
We provide a range of counseling services. We boast of a team of seasoned counselors that provide counseling services that cover all aspects of living. But to the specifics of your question, yes we provide premarital counseling and also to the already married. You see, issues and challenges arise in marriage which if not well attended to, might affect such marriage adversely and the entire family will suffer in the end. So ours is to intervene by settling disputes and resolving them as quickly as possible before they become difficult to manage. We hear of couples taking their issues to courts but we feel that is not necessary. So a center like this is focused on preventing marriages from breakdown.
You talked about supporting less privileged children and youths. How do you do that?
That is one key aspect of our programme. All around us, we see a lot of vulnerable children. Some are orphans; some are kids without care at the family level. We see children that ought to be in school roaming around, some begging, others hawking, while some have totally taken to crime. Our intervention in this regard is to take them off the streets and get them into school. We believe that with the right education, these vulnerable children would be able to gain right skills and mindsets to enable them contribute meaningfully to their lives, that of their families and society at large. In doing this, we intend to partner with relevant organizations, government and the private sector to ensure that we reduce the number of outof-school children. We believe with all these initiatives and programmes we propose to undertake, we would be able to integrate these groups of persons into society to enable them contribute their quota to the development of society and the society would be better off.
In five years, where do you hope to see the NGO?
We want to see more and more people out of poverty. Az-Zawaj intends to sustain the momentum through various forms of empowerment programmes for the less privileged. In five years, it is our hope that Az-Zawaj would be one of the frontline organizations known for providing such support services to the less privileged and poor in the society.
How do you think the Federal Government can work with NGO’s like yours?
Our main objective is to take people out of poverty and that is also what government seeks to achieve. But government cannot do it all alone. It requires partnerships with organizations such as ours. The present government has come up with social intervention programmes and the ideals of those programmes align with our mission. But getting these noble interventions to reach those that require them entails that government partners with organizations like ours especially those that are in remote communities that are usually not captured in such progammes.
Your partnership Fadama II, how is it like?
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We are on the verge of partnering with Fadama III programme to provide farm support to women in remote communities in the FCT. Our intention is to have farm inputs provided to select beneficiaries to boost their farming activities. We want women to provide food for their families, earn a living, and generally improve their livelihoods.