{"id":4699,"date":"2015-12-30T10:26:34","date_gmt":"2015-12-30T15:26:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.brethren.org\/?p=4699"},"modified":"2015-12-30T10:26:34","modified_gmt":"2015-12-30T15:26:34","slug":"the-leftovers-widows-and-children","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/blogtest\/2015\/12\/30\/the-leftovers-widows-and-children\/","title":{"rendered":"The Leftovers &#8211; Widows and Children"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\t<strong>By Janet Crago<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Many Nigerian widows and children are having a very difficult time adjusting to their new family situation, and \u201cmoving on\u201d with their lives.\u00a0 They\u2019re often left feeling like \u201cleftovers\u201d.\u00a0 But, let me explain.\u00a0 Like widows in many places, they often don\u2019t know what to do to survive, and in Nigeria, they often find themselves begging for help with their living situation and\/or begging for money for the education of their remaining children.\u00a0 Many of the men and boys have been killed.\u00a0 Boko Haram doesn\u2019t kidnap men.\u00a0 The men are slaughtered (i.e., throats cut).\u00a0 Sometimes they\u2019ll even slaughter small boys.\u00a0 They only kidnap women and children.\u00a0 They\u2019re the \u201cleftovers\u201d in this conflict.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_4700\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-4700\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/blog\/?attachment_id=4700\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-4700\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-4700\" src=\"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Dr-Rebecca-Dali-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"Dr. Rebecca Dali\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-4700\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Dr. Rebecca Dali<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>As I talked to Rebecca Dali, who started the non-profit organization CCEPI (Center for Caring, Empowerment and Peace Initiatives), she told me that she\u2019s recorded the names of over 10,000 widows who are the result of the Boko Haram insurgency.\u00a0 Many of them are very young, and almost all of them have multiple children, with very few boys still living.\u00a0 So, what are some of the problems faced by those newly widowed? &#8212;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Virtually all of them live in poverty, and struggle daily to have enough to eat.<\/li>\n<li>Many have inadequate shelter.\u00a0 If they\u2019re still living in their home area, most houses have been burned.\u00a0 If they\u2019re displaced, they might need to go to a refugee camp or live with relatives.\u00a0 Traditional culture in Nigeria dictates that when a man dies his property becomes the property of the deceased man\u2019s family, so the widow often cannot go back to the house she was living in even if it is still standing.\u00a0 Also, if a widow remarries, her children that were born from the marriage with her late husband now become the \u201cproperty\u201d of her deceased husband\u2019s family.\u00a0 Unfortunately, children inherited in this way are sometimes abused, treated as house servants, and get very little education.<\/li>\n<li>If a woman manages to escape from Boko Haram and returns to her husband, she is sometimes rejected even by him.\u00a0 He can refuse to allow her back into her previous home.\u00a0 Even if he allows her to come back, sometimes his family will reject her and make her life miserable (i.e., she is now a \u201cspoiled\u201d woman!).<\/li>\n<li>Physically, the women who manage to escape from their Boko Haram kidnappers frequently come back home savaged and very thin.\u00a0 If they refused to convert to Islam, they were not allowed to eat until everyone else had their fill, which meant they very often went away hungry.\u00a0 The food and supplies furnished in the Boko Haram camps were stolen from villages they\u2019ve invaded and destroyed.\u00a0 But, the women of the Boko Haram will not even share the necessary products for cleanliness, so any woman who escapes will come back very dirty.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The purpose of CCEPI is to assist women who became widows because of Boko Haram.\u00a0 CCEPI helps them learn skills to be able to live on their own, and operates a livelihood center where they teach knitting, sewing, livestock farming, and computer skills.\u00a0 They also have a department that assists widows who have been the target of gender based violence, an education department which assists widows and their children with school fees for the primary or secondary school of their choice, and a child protection department that takes care of orphans and displaced children.\u00a0 The children are assigned a guardian who ensures that they\u2019re taken care of.\u00a0 CCEPI also has a Health department where widows can purchase common drugs.\u00a0 CCEPI also teaches sanitation skills and helps to provide shelter for the shelter-less.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_4489\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-4489\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/blog\/2015\/opening-a-new-eyn-church-in-jalingo\/new-church-1\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-4489\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-4489\" src=\"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/new-church-1-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"ZME - Women's Ministry\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-4489\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">ZME &#8211; Women&#8217;s Ministry<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>But, CCEPI is not alone in these efforts.\u00a0 Widows are also getting help from the Church of the Brethren in Nigeria (known as the EYN).\u00a0 EYN now has a Director of Women\u2019s Ministry, Suzan Mark Zira, who has started a very important ministry for the assistance of widows.\u00a0 Each DCC Secretary (District Church Council), and the Women\u2019s Leader in that district, make a list of the widows in their district who need assistance.\u00a0 When this is done, the Women\u2019s Ministry has planned a four-step process to help them.\u00a0 This four-step process is:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Provide emergency relief assistance as needed<\/li>\n<li>Conduct Trauma Healing Workshops where needed<\/li>\n<li>Enable Skill Acquisition &#8211; The purpose is to enable them to earn enough money to live on their own.\u00a0 The Women\u2019s Leader in each district is first trained in how to make the following products:\u00a0 liquid soap, Vaseline, room deodorizer, perfume, shampoo, Dettol (liquid antiseptic), and Izal (bleach).\u00a0 She then teaches the widows in her district how to make these products.\u00a0 Each are taught a different product so they don\u2019t need to compete against each other.<\/li>\n<li>Provide money to start their businesses &#8211; Each widow is given just 2,000 Naira ($10) to start their business.\u00a0 They are also given the first products that they will sell.\u00a0 This gives each of them a start for their business.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>To ensure that the money given to the women reaches its destination, the Women\u2019s Leader from the district must sign for the money she will give to the widows in her district.\u00a0 Then the individual widows must sign when they receive it from the Women\u2019s Leader of her district.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_4702\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-4702\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/blog\/?attachment_id=4702\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-4702\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-4702\" src=\"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/widows2-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"Widows (picture courtesy of EYN)\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-4702\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Widows (picture courtesy of EYN)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The Women\u2019s Ministry has also given a very important Project Management workshop.\u00a0 They call the Women\u2019s Leader, the Women\u2019s Secretary, and the Women\u2019s Treasurer from each district to come to a training workshop to teach them how to write reports so the Women\u2019s Ministry can receive regular updates on what\u2019s happening in each DCC.\u00a0 They\u2019re also being trained on accountability and transparency, leadership and mentoring, and the ministry guidelines for a woman ministering to others.<\/p>\n<p>This Women\u2019s Ministry Program was established in the last six months.\u00a0 There are currently two women serving full-time in this ministry.\u00a0 They\u2019re facing the following challenges:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>They don\u2019t have a vehicle to transport the various ingredients they need to take to leaders who will then train others to make the products mentioned earlier.<\/li>\n<li>They don\u2019t have adequate staff to accomplish their goals.<\/li>\n<li>They lack a stove for the preparation of their products.<\/li>\n<li>They need dedicated paid Women\u2019s Ministry staff at the DCC level.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Janet Crago Many Nigerian widows and children are having a very difficult time adjusting to their new family situation, and \u201cmoving on\u201d with their lives.\u00a0 They\u2019re often left feeling like \u201cleftovers\u201d.\u00a0 But, let me explain.\u00a0 Like widows in many places, they often don\u2019t know what to do to survive, and in Nigeria, they often<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[139,370,419,813,814,921,1213],"class_list":["post-4699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nigeria","tag-boko-haram","tag-ekklesiyar-yanuwa-a-nigeria","tag-eyn","tag-nigeria","tag-nigeria-crisis","tag-prayer","tag-widows"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/blogtest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/blogtest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/blogtest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/blogtest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/blogtest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4699"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/blogtest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4699\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/blogtest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/blogtest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/blogtest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}