Foundation Awards N197m Grant to Boost Free Health, Education Services

Foundation Awards N197m Grant to Boost Free Health, Education Services

James Emejo in Abuja

The TY Danjuma Foundation has disbursed the sum of N197 million grant to fund 24 projects in health and education across the country.

The foundation’s acting Chief Executive, Mr. Gima Forje added that a total of N227 million would eventually be awarded to partner organisations this year, including an additional N30 million which would be disbursed in response to emerging challenges such as disease outbreaks and flooding that may occur in the course of the year.

Speaking at the 2019 Grantees’ training and learning conference in Abuja, the foundation’s acting CEO who presented cheques to selected implementing partners, explained that the disbursement would cover maternal and child health, free medical mission, nutrition, girl child education, support for internally displaced persons, school feeding, and teachers training.

He said: “The foundation’s grant-making in 2019 as has been the case over the years is particularly responsive to the needs of undeserved communities in the focal states of the foundation as well as in the new localities where we will be working.”
Essentially, the learning conference formally ends a grant year and provides an avenue to outline lessons learned in the course of the previous grant cycle, and generate feedback from the grantees on how the foundation can make its grants more effective.

According to Forje, this year’s projects will be implemented in several locations in 9 states; Akwa-Ibom, Edo, Taraba, Delta, Niger, Kebbi, Bauchi, Plateau, Adamawa, and the Federal Capital Territory; making it a total 32 out of 36 states the foundation has impacted in its humanitarian and developmental interventions.

Akwa-Ibom, Delta, and Adamawa are new beneficiaries from the foundation’s grants.
The management encourages grantees to judiciously use the fund in implementing agreed projects in a manner that would uplift beneficiaries living at the grassroots in the nine targeted states.

Executive Director, Care Vision Support Initiative, Dr. Pokop Bupwatda, which is one of the foundation’s implementing partners in the area of eye treatment, commended the foundation for restoring sight to the hitherto hopeless people.

His organisation was one of the beneficiaries commissioned to carry out free complex eye care treatment in Edo, Taraba and other communities.
He said: “You can’t quantify the impact because somebody who hitherto had not been seeing and then all of a sudden. So once you open the person’s eye, the person can go back to work…and it improves the quality of life because the person that is blind depends on a guide to do anything.”

He said: “With this grant, we are going to reach 3000 people. That is what the grant sets out to do. And out of that 3000 we are targeting are targeting surgeries of over 300 patients. And we have over 3000 glasses that we will be giving out free to beneficiaries.
“The very important thing about this grant is that 18 children who are blind from what we call either congenital cataract are taken to specific hospitals for specialised surgeries by the paediatric ophthalmologist because we can’t do their own surgeries in the field because of the delicate nature of children.

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