Women partner with EYN Disaster Relief Ministry in Nigeria

*New wrappers, cloths commonly worn by Nigerian women, are donated by the women’s fellowship group in the Michika area to the work of the EYN Disaster Relief Ministry. Photo by Zakariya Musa*

By Zakariya Musa

The Women’s Fellowship (ZME) of the District Church Council, Vi, in Michika Local Government Area of Adamawa State, Nigeria, has supported the Disaster Relief Ministry of Ekklesiyar Yan’uwa a Nigeria (EYN, the Church of the Brethren in Nigeria). The women’s group provided relief items gathered by individuals as a result of advocacy messages carried among women by Salamatu Joel S. Billi, wife of EYN president Joel Billi.

The women collected and brought five and a half bags of 100 kilogram bags of maize and guinea corn, six new wrappers, cups, used shoes, and toiletries.

Salamatu Billi has visited a number of sites where EYN members and others are living as refugees or internally displaced people (IDPs):

–a refugee camp in Minawao where about 52,000 people are hosted, the majority EYN members displaced from the neighboring country of Cameroon;

–the 4,000 displaced children at the International Christian Centre Uhogua, in Benin in Edo State in southern Nigeria; and

–the Christian Association of Nigeria Internally Displaced Persons Camp in Maiduguri in northeastern Nigeria, where she mingled with thousands of displaced people hosted in the state capital of Borno State.

*Yuguda Mdurvwa, who heads up the EYN*
*Disaster Relief Ministry, poses with food and other donations*
*from the women’s fellowship in the Michika area. Photo by Zakariya Musa*

EYN has suffered great devastation by Boko Haram in the northeast of Nigeria, and has received support from its partners to mitigate the suffering of affected communities. The Disaster Relief Ministry has responded by providing shelter, food security, medical care, clean water, sanitation and hygiene, agriculture aid, psychosocial/livelihood support, and trauma consciousness and resilience training in some of the affected communities.

— Zakariya Musa is head of EYN Media.

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