Health2Wealth

Ibe Obinna Goodluck is a husband, a preacher of the gospel, citizen of Nigeria, president of Give her a chance Africa foundation. An administrator, a mentor, coach, former media personnel. 

Health2Wealth is a menstrual health hygiene and economic empowerment project which seeks to introduce and distribute a more hygienic reusable menstrual pads to vulnerable women and girls within slums, rural communities, ghettos especially orphans, widows, disabled and the less privileged. Under the economic empowernment thematic angle of the project, Give her a chance Africa foundation under the direct partnership of real relief way Denmark will also teach the identified target beneficiaries on how to locally source and produce the reusable safe pads while also empowering them with sewing machines and other tools needed to start up. 

This project covers two thematic areas viz a viz health and wellbeing / economic empowerment of vulnerable and neglected adolescent girls and young women within slums , ghettos and rural communities in Ogoni, Etche and Diobu all in Rivers state Nigeria. Statistically, 80% of local women and girls within these areas and in Nigeria lack access to affordable , hygienic menstrual pads which has resulted in infection and infertility in many cases. This is also without prejudice to the ill experiences meted out to some of the young girls in schools. The project which will directly benefit above 1000 young women and girls will seek to distribute carefully produced reusable safe pads to our target beneficiaries while also ameliorating the high rate of poverty amongst them by providing a source of income for the identified families through skill acquisition and empowerment. The women and girls within the selected communities suffer high level of neglect from Government, private sector initiatives / projects. 

Health2Wealth aims to move our target beneficiaries from being beneficiaries of a more hygienic, affordable menstrual health campaign to becoming economically and financially independent as one of direct aim of this laudable project is zero poverty amongst women and girls. We want to see more orphans afforded opportunities to become who they should be, more widows given back a sense of belonging, disabled women and girls reintegrated due to their skills and automatically become employers of labour while the word - less privilege is blotted out amongst these special breeds. 

This project is solely for rural young women and girls covering orphans, young widows, disabled, less privileged within the three areas in Rivers state Nigeria representing slums, ghettos and rural communities. This project is born out of our yearly vote for a project philosophy where the opinions of our target beneficiaries form the nucleus of our project selection. Our beneficiaries narrowed down their needs to the thematic areas being covered. The project is to be implemented under the " our project for us" brand where 80% of project is formulated and implemented by our beneficiaries representatives while the lead organization and her partners provides administrative and technical support. This makes for cohesion and acceptability and removes ingenuity. 

Health2Wealth is its alignment to the overall aims and objectives of the elevate prize seeks to improve the lives of the neglected adolescent girls and young women by addressing their menstrual health and wellbeing while also taking them from poverty into employers of labour through skill acquisition and empowerment. We elevate their menstrual and economic lives. 

This project is born out of an experience our team first had on our visit to the communities to identify projects for the year. We encountered a young girl in school who was messed up during her monthly menstrual experience, while one of our team member intervened to cover up the scenario , it was later discovered that it is normal amongst them as their inability to have stable source of income makes it harder for them to even afford the normal disposable menstrual pads. As such poverty rate is high here which gave birth to the economic angle of the project. We decided to then design questionnaires for their project needs, where the feedback gave rise to health2Wealth. We want to use one stone to kill two beds with Health2Wealth project. 

This project is motivated and fueled by the passion of the organization and her team to ensure that vulnerable women and girls are given a voice in any possible way. The team in her BOT has an orphan whose voting for projects is given ultimate consideration as she seems to understand them more. We want to see these neglected special breeds given the chance they DESERVE irrespective of background, geopolitical, geographical location, ethnicity etc. We love the Girl child and women are will do anything to affect them positively because in every girl child and woman is a bank carrying the next generation. 

Give her a chance Africa foundation since its inauguration and official registration in 2018 has geared all its expertise and resources towards attainment of its mandate which is the African girl child. As such, our team is made up of young volunteer girls and men who are passionate about the vulnerable women and girls drawn from the professional umbrella of young African leaders initiative network (YALI). This is without prejudice to the direct involvement of solace place foundation, real relief way Denmark and Riches of salvation global ministry in this project where all technical, administrative efforts are geared towards this project to achieve optimum.

During the inauguration of Give her a chance Africa foundation and the aftermath in over 6 African countries, the leadership of the organization was faced with leadership challenges as it relates to country directorship, the president had to device a selection criteria which was rare through the YALI network and was able to control and oversee operations online without interface with any of them. Another challenge was financing projects, but the president with her young BOT leadership geared into action by pulling their resources together to embark on projects both within Nigeria and outside the country. They ensure that resources do not stop their projects. At the course of the current covid 19 Epidemic, the organization utilized educational tools like google classroom, introduced sun books to make for continuity of the education of her students under scholarship. 

On assuming the leadership of this great organization, and leading from a point where 80% are women, the president ensured that all were given the needed opportunity to initiate projects while he vets. He also was able to supervise and monitor the activities of other country directors and could motivate them to work despite not being able to have a first hand face to face meeting with them. One of the outstanding quality of the president is his ability to motivate others and also listen when needed. In his current job as a minister of the gospel, he has grown from being just a mere chorister to an ordained minister , president of the youth arm of the church, personal assistant to the general overseer, pastor in charge of a satellite church amongst others. He is a team player and high flyer. 

The innovative angle of Health2Wealth project is embedded in our replacement of the conventional menstrual pads with a more hygienic, affordable , reusable safe pads with antimicrobial formula. We also locally source the materials instead of importing them while also engaging the use of mini sewing machines to ease of production as against hand sowing which can also be engaged. 

At the end of this laudable project , our target beneficiaries should have reduction in infertility due to infection, increased menstrual health and wellbeing, get more women and girls economically and financially independent thereby increasing  GDP of the community. This will adversely reduce violence against women especially at home as an economically viable woman gains respect than her counterpart who is seen as a parasite. 

This project will directly benefit above 2000 women who will be beneficiaries of the skill acquisition and empowerment angle but will indirectly empower 10000 adolescent girls and young women under the free distribution cadre. Within the next 5 years, ghacaf will seek to empower about 5 million of these special cases under our direct beneficiaries platform. 

Within the next one year if God tarries, ghacaf will seek to extend our focus to some other areas of the SDG especially as it relates to Education of our target beneficiaries as education is the bedrock for curbing all forms of disadvantaged positions and Zero hunger where we establish a mega farm where we produce food products for free distribution especially during pandemics as experienced under the covid 19. Our beneficiaries are strangely neglected in all palliatives as distributed. 

Our greatest barrier has been on funds or grants to reach more of our target beneficiaries but hopefully that will be curbed as soon as possible with our ability to engage more partners. We would also be on the look out for technical and legal barriers judging by our extension to other countries where language barriers and terms of operations differ. 

To overcome the financial barriers, Ghacaf team members will increase each BOT members stake at the next general meeting while also anticipating an award of grant from grantors as we are seeking and applying open grants and solicitations as may be available. On the technical and legal support, Ghacaf will also engage the services of country directors who must be indigenes of the country of its extended operations while also registering its adhoc organizations in line with available requirements. We will also seek partnership with notable and proven organizations already operational in the countries of interest. 

We are in partnership with Real relief way Denmark who provides the products for this project while also providing technical support / manpower training, solace place foundation whose wealth of govt networks is needed to get the needed legal supports and also technical support, Riches of salvation global ministry whose support will be on the area of 10% financial support and volunteer angle to the project. 

The project will be funded through the usual sustained donations of the BOT though too infinitesimal due to the huge financial implication of the current project. As such the project will be overly sustained through grants which will be sort from govt, organizations and in kind donations etc. 

Riches of salvation global ministry made a pledge of $10000 towards the project. 

The project is pegged to cost about $400,000 which will be overly generated through grants which we are already seeking from relevant open grantor organizations. This cost implications cover cost for machines, training cost, administrative cost etc.

The cost implications include 

Website design / publishing                                                                                              $800
Staff stipend for 6  months for 50 staffs                                                               $15000
medicals, audit fee                                                                                              $5000
Training cost for 2000 beneficiaries                                                               $20000
Empowerment for 2000 beneficiaries with relevant machines / equipments @ $95               $190,000
Feeding.                                                                                                                                                 $20000
Construction / equipping of 3 mini skill training centres for women and girls                               $50000
monitoring / Evaluation                                                                               $10000
Transportation, telephone, Accommodation for staffs / facilitators                                                $5000
  Publicity (handbills, fliers, banners , radio adverts).                                                                             $5000
Printing of customized H2W T-shirts (2500 pieces) @ $10      $25000   

Visa fee for 3 staffs of Real relief way denmark                                                             $20000

Miscellaneous.            $10000                                                                                                                           
 Total                                $375,800