Educate and Empower 400 PLWD Leaders in Nigeria

Educate and Empower 400 PLWD as Leaders in Nigeria.

We continue to learn great lessons on how to translate the organizational efforts to engage authentic community support base for the long-term PLWD Project in Nigeria. The giving Tuesday program November 28, 2023, provided us this learning opportunity and enabling us to create a bench mark framework for engaging with both private, public, and individual philanthropists for sustainable supports. We wish to express our profound appreciation for the recurring supports being received from some of our donors on the GlobalGiving Organization platform. We give sincere appreciation  to our local in-kind supports from GIEVA Board members, staff, advocates, and individual who believe in this CAUSE. 

The November 28, Giving Tuesday program successfully held in Jos, Plateau State, Nigeria. This attracted the involvement of the police using official vehicles as a guide along the busy business way in the city, 13 volunteers with PLWD participants to share leaflets during the “Road Walk Campaign” for the awareness of inclusion of Persons Living with Disabilities (PLWD). It was a heart warming day for the organization seeing the  Giving Tuesday event bringing excitement to over 5000 members of the public who spontaneously joined the “Road-Walk Campaign” along with some members of the PLWD and volunteers of GIEVA Organization.

The Giving Tuesday Program Public lecture on: “Building a sustainable and inclusive community for the physically challenged” held at the university of Jos venue attracted 40 PLWD students from the Special Education and Rehabilitation Department,  over 500 members of the university population, some members of GIEVA Consortium Generative AI  Project technical experts, and the public to witness in the distribution of 10 -walking canes, 10 tape recording devices as well as three Wheelchairs  to the  PLWD students  at the Department of Special Education and Rehabilitation Sciences, University of Jos.

This singular program has opened the doors of opportunity to work in partnership with the institution to support the PLWD Project in Nigeria going forward.  The Giving Tuesday program of 2023 enabled us to present the need for the continued support of “Educate and Empower 400 persons with Disability Leaders in Nigeria”.

The Giving Tuesday annual program as popularized by GlobalGiving platform has become a standard megaphone for the GIEVA public awareness campaign and education.

Worthy of note is the participation of the GIEVA AI Technical consortium members and researchers to learn on how the consortium can be involved in educating and empowering PLWD Leaders in the use of generative AI technology.

We wish to also report that GIEVA’s Consortium handling the Generative IA grant project was recently chosen as one of the awardees of the data.org & Microsoft AI Skills Challenge. Awards were given to FIVE organizations out of 600 applicants from 93 countries around the world working with generative AI to accelerate digital inclusion and skills advancement and acquisition for workers from historically marginalized population.

As the consortium infrastructure consisting of four organizations (GIEVA, Co-lab, Zues Tech ICT Solutions, and the Computer Dept of the University of Jos) evolve into a training platform, it is our hope that the ongoing research results will provide us with a trans-formative education training framework for the effective and beneficial application of  Generative AI in the education of the out-of-school children and  the PLWD population  in Nigeria.

Since we joined GlobalGiving Organization as one of its many partners, we continue to attend many of its useful and empowering webinars to develop needed skills and form coalitions with organizations with similar missions to change the 31 million PLWDs’ narratives in Nigeria.  

Our relationship with the financial institutions (Sterling Bank) to drive “Amira and Friends Edutainment” products, targeting our out-of-school children in vulnerable communities continues to blossom. We are at a planning stage to collaborate and work together to design trans-formative educational programs for the out-of-school children using the “Amira and Friend Edutainment” products.   

We are excited that the GIEVA’s long-term dreams to “Educate and Empower 400 PLWD as Leaders in Nigeria” is very much on course and becoming more and more a sustainable reality.

Lastly, envisaging the expansion of STEP’s PLWD Project long-term plan we have engaged and training volunteers to design technovation girls and  STEM related activities to inspire GIRLS specifically and young adults in general in science related educational courses. We are initiating means of identifying PLWD adolescents/young adults to encourage and support  in STEM related studies and inspire diversity, equity, and inclusion for the common good.

We at GIEVA wish to profoundly appreciate our supporters- GlobalGiving Organization, Consortium group, individuals, and the larger population for believing in this Long Term CAUSE. Together we shall change the narrative for the common good.

• December 2024 Newletter Issue (DOCX)