NPO Targets Women, Girls in New Initiative

Vanessa Obioha

Against the backdrop of the low number of women with access to financial empowerment, healthcare and quality education in the country, a global not-forprofit social enterprise, Centre for Health Sciences Training, Research and Development (CHESTRAD) is launching a new programme that will tackle this need.

Called ‘Tariro’, a South African word for ‘hope’, the programme is “a health and financial inclusion programme, which gives and expands the access of children, girls and women to financial and health products and services,” said CEO of CHESTRAD Global, Lola Dare at a recent zoom press briefing.

The chairman of the African led non-profit organisation, Bimbola Ogunkelu said that Tariro is motivated by the visible economic inequalities between men and women. He observed that women in Nigeria have lesser job opportunities, earn less and save less, thus “limiting their capacity to support themselves, children and families.”

National statistics show that Nigeria loses 145 women of childbearing age every day due to pregnancy-related complications and an estimated 20 per cent (10 million) of the world’s out-ofschool children are in Nigeria, 60 per cent (six million) of who are girls. Also, women represent between 60-79 per cent of Nigeria’s rural labour force.

Dare noted that the ongoing pandemic was blind to issues about women, particularly in gender-based domestic violence against women.

She revealed that the rate of domestic violence against women spiked during the lockdown.

“One of the things we have observed during COVID-19 is an increase in gender and domestic violence. In motor parks and market areas, the rate of gender-based violence against women increased during

COVID-19 by 58 per cent.”

She continued: “The plight of women is worse now in the pandemic. COVID-19 is actually gender-blind and has ignored women. And so, women have had their small SMEs totally collapsed, a woman cannot afford to purchase health care for herself or children. She cannot put them in school or contribute to household income.”

Under Tariro, 500,000 women in urban slums in Lagos will have access to qualitative services in health, nutrition, and early learning. Through these women, an additional two million children can have access to these services.