By Peter On Feb 2, 2022
Mr. Kabiru Adisa Adeniyi, is a Chartered Accountant and the founder of Guidance Community Development Foundation, a non-governmental organization, NGO.
In this interview with NGUMAH ISAAC, he speaks on why he established the body and promised that less privileged members of the society would benefit from the organization’s humanitarian programmes should it gets the needed government support. Excerpts:
Can we meet you, sir?
My name is Kabiru Adisa Adeniyi, I am an accountant by profession, a fellow chartered accountant, humanitarian, social worker and community developer. I am the founder of the Guidance Community Development Foundation.
What prompted you to set up a non-governmental organization, NGO?
THE reason why I started an NGO is to give back to the community. When I was born, I met schools in the community which I benefited immensely from. It also occurred to me that if not because of the efforts of the people, I wouldn’t have the opportunity.
So, I need to do my own part to give back to the community by helping the orphans and vulnerable in the community, that is the reason why I started the NGO.
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What specific ways do you empower the people and alleviate poverty?
I empower people through vocational training, entrepreneurship development and paying of school fees and medical bills of the most vulnerable in the community.
How many HIV patients have benefited from your NGO?
Today we should be talking of over 30,000 people, we have conducted tests for, through advocacy, sensitization, counseling and what have you.
Can you tell us about the empowerment projects established in rural communities?
What we discovered is that many people want to do business, they don’t have the money to do it so we organized an interest-free loan. It is a scheme in which somebody borrows a particular amount of money and we divide it into six months, the payment is made every two weeks. For example, if somebody needs N200,000, he can borrow from us, there is an application fee the person will pay back the same amount of money without interest.
What about your educational projects?
What we do is that we give scholarships to the most vulnerable people that are brilliant without the means of paying for their school fees from primary school to tertiary institution, we support them.
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What are the economic impacts of your NGO on your communities?
It is poverty alleviation, by making sure that people who are willing to do business are assisted, either learn a vocation or by the provision of capital to them to run their businesses or to expand their businesses.
What is the level of HIV awareness in the communities?
What we normally do is to organize pre-counseling and post counseling so that in a situation somebody tested positive, you will know it is not a death sentence but to manage the HIV by taking drugs. So, through that, we refer the patients to the government hospital either to manage the virus so that they can be placed on anti-virus drugs and many of them are doing fine right now.
How do you cooperate with the government to increase awareness of HIV?
We support them through radio announcements, through advocacy, by creating awareness, especially the marginalized, the disadvantaged and people that are in difficult terrain. We take our campaign to the most difficult area.
Tell us more about your empowerment and vocational training centre and awareness?
Most people requested help and when we investigate and discover that they need the support we assist after we might have requested proof of inability to pay school fees or inability to pay medical bills. Thereafter, we support the person, we don’t give money directly to the people in need of medical or educational support, we pay directly to the school or hospital.
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What is your focus?
Our focus is to have a community or a ward where no orphans go to bed without eating food.
Tell us about breakthroughs in your NGO?
Most of the best we can talk of is caring for orphans and vulnerable children. There is a community in Kuta where we discovered one boy called Toheeb, the boy is the one that calls prayers for the Muslims. The boy cannot read, he has been memorising or cramming everything he was taught in school and based on that the boy was being promoted every year.
So, we were the ones that took the boy to the special school of handicap, currently, the boy is fine and we are the ones paying his school fees in the past ten years. Our joy is that if not because of that intervention, the boy would have just been rotten in the community.
They took the boy from a rural community to the city in Iwo where he is currently on study, it is a great breakthrough and we are happy with that and through the efforts of the boy, we have employed a teacher that we have been paying, paying for the school.
I am the one paying the salary of that teacher for over four years now, the job has been created and the boy is doing perfectly well in school, even his father was given financial support to run his business because the boy has no mother. He had cataracts but before we know that cataracts have developed into glaucoma which currently has no cure in Nigeria.
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What should government do to assist your NGO?
If the government can give us endowment funds or grants it will go a long way for us to impact more lives.
What were you doing before you established your NGO?
I work with a company, I am a salary earner so I was running an NGO as a part-time. I am still working for somebody.
How old is your NGO?
I started in 2000 so it is over 21 years now.
My NGO will impact more lives if we get grants from govt, says Adeniyi
