Yetunde Ajibade can best be described as a woman of many parts- lawyer, educationist, Montessori proprietor and more all rolled into one, who firmly believes in the fact that there are limitless ways to share kindness and generosity to the world. A global partner of Provide a Meal Nigeria, an NGO, she and her partners are deeply concerned about the level of hunger in the country and are working purposefully to bring succour to less privileged individuals through the distribution of food to local communities. Recently, Ijede, an Ikorodu community in Lagos, was a recipient of their benevolent efforts. In this interview with MARY NNAH, Ajibade talks about the rising hunger pandemic in Nigeria and measures by her group to ameliorate it
Tell us about your recent mission in Ijede?
My partners, Samson Ibitoye, Adekunle Gbagba, Yemi Adeshina and I, went to Ijede to implement an initiative organised by Provide a Meal Nigeria (PAM). We are a non-profit organisation focused on SDG 2 under the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, which aims to eradicate poverty. We are focused on ensuring that no man, woman or child goes to bed hungry in Nigeria. We are supported by our project partners, GIZ and Ministry of Labour alongside other partners and sponsors, such as Tantalizers, House of Jahdara, Code Management Group, Urban Primer Ltd, Gemini Luxury Homes, Polaris Marine and Offshore services Ltd, and Owonikoko Farms to mention a few. The goal is to positively impact the community, to encourage the youth.
What influenced your decision to start up this NGO?
I have spent over 10 years pursuing empowerment programmes focused on women. I have seen people going through pain, and it is not something you would wish on your worst enemy. If you go into the rural areas and see what people are going through, you will realise that what we are complaining about in the city just sounds ungrateful.
I have seen people who have lived in garri for about a week; people who don’t know when they are going to eat a proper meal. I saw this when I visited the Niger-Delta many years back. I have seen hungry people first-hand. Imagine a child walking up to the mother and asking for food, but the mother is helpless. The situation is real. If you cannot eat, if there is no food in your tummy, you cannot think of anything else.
As a mother, how do you feel when you are on the field attending to people who are victims of hunger?
I think it is just motivation to do more. There is this misconception that giving back is only for the rich. We believe that we need to have enough and even more than enough before we think of other hungry people. There is a popular saying that givers never lack. If your neighbour is hungry, the next person they will come for is you if you don’t help them with food.
So, I think we are trying to change the narrative where people are thinking that they cannot do anything. With a thousand naira, someone will go to bed with a meal. Even if that’s all you do in a year, a month, a day, you have been able to transform someone’s life; you have been able to add value to someone’s life. It’s really bad on the streets. Every time we have to go on the streets to give them food, you see them running over one another, so excited to collect our meal packs and all of that.
But I will also say this: PAM is not encouraging laziness. It is not encouraging irresponsibility in any form. However, if you have someone who cares enough about you to give you food to eat, please care enough about yourself to get something done so that you will be able to provide for someone else. That is the cycle we are looking to create here where someone lifts you, then you empower yourself to lift someone else.
Where are you presently and how far do you think you have to go to meet the target?
We are still a very small team. Provide a meal started off in the UK with Samson Ibitoye and Kunle Gbagba, while Yemi Adesina and I are at the forefront of the Nigerian chapter, along with a couple of volunteers. Then we have those who have volunteered all over Nigeria to support our initiatives. We are gaining momentum even with the popular food chains like Tantalizers and Chicken Republic who are willing to come on board to partner with us.
We are looking to do more. This is why we are looking for partners and support. One hundred percent of donor’s donations go to the beneficiaries. For example, if you donate a thousand naira, a thousand naira’s worth of a meal will be delivered to the beneficiaries, that are what we are focused on now. Right now, we are very happy with what we have done so far but we know that we can do more and that is why we are creating awareness for more people to come on board.
Tell us about the hurdles that you face so far?
Financing is the major hurdle. It is when you reach out for initiatives like this that you realize that some people are not as interested in doing good as one might think; that is why we are here to enlighten the public that you don’t need to have a lot to give a little to someone else. Funding is the major issue.
Is this your first outreach here?
No, we have had a couple of outreach programmes. We have our launch in Nigeria on World Food Day which is October 15, 2021, since then we’ve had several outreach programmes across the country with our partners.
So far which one has been memorable?
Each one has been memorable; it is like asking a mother which of her children is her favourite. Everyone is. If we are impacting five lives or a thousand lives, everyone one of them is memorable. The fact is that we leave someone with a smile on their face.
With your experience so far, what will you advise the Nigerian government?
We would love to partner with the government; you know the government is into initiatives focused on food and especially for the children, so we are looking to partner with them. The government is trying, but we believe that if they also make use of technology, more people could have access to the feeding initiatives the government is working on right now. They are doing their bit now, but I think using technology will give them more accountability.
How often do you run these outreaches and do you have any future projects apart from the launch?
We are signing up a lot of charities right now. We are going through the right processes to get them. We will be organizing initiatives focused on all these different charities. We had one with widows. We also had some with the children in the rural areas.
We will also be focusing on men and the youth. We have people who are out of jobs for some reason and are unable to feed, we are looking at supporting these people and helping them to sustain themselves at least when it comes to food, till they are employed again. This is also something we can tell organisations that are laying people off. We saw what happened during the COVID-19 pandemic.
A lot of organisations could not continue with their staff strength. If we have their profile, we can always send them meal-codes to claim food from restaurants around them. The good thing is that anybody can sign up from any part of the world to help someone in Nigeria. All you need to do is to set up an account, decide who your beneficiary charity will be and they will pass the meal codes out on your behalf.
If someone calls and says Aunty, Uncle, I don’t have something to eat; no problem, a meal will be given to the person everyday for three months. The Meal Sponsor pays money into the PAM account and PAM will deliver food to the beneficiary until he gets back on his feet. Some people don’t look hungry but are hungry. You will be surprised at the people who walk up to you and say “Madam, Uncle I have not had anything to eat today, please help me.” Even in the city, people who look like you and I, who look seemingly well-fed, some of them are hungry.
So how does one become a Meal Sponsor to someone, somewhere that is hungry?
On our website, www.provideameal.ng, you can donate directly to PAM foundation’s account with your email as reference or you can sign up and create your account so that you give out meal-codes to people. If you have people in your neighbourhood who are hungry, as long as they are on our database, they can walk into the restaurant and pick up food. So, rather than give them money, give them meal codes.
If you have an organisation that is willing to partner with PAM and donate a thousand meals, meals can be donated through our platform, to your nearest charity and the meal-codes can be picked up from there and used to get food at any preferred vendor by the beneficiary. We don’t have cash exchanging hands, we transfer directly to the meal vendor through the platform, and everything is a seamless process to encourage transparency. It makes it very easy to coordinate initiatives that have to do with feeding.
If you have the power, what would you do to ensure that no Nigerian goes to bed hungry?
I would encourage the government to take PAM up and monitor the distribution of supplies and database collection. If I were the government, I would ensure that we partner with the private sector, the public sector, individuals, corporate organisations and even international non-profit organisations to see how we can come together and eradicate poverty in Nigeria.
Where next after Ijede?
We will go round Nigeria. We are going to the East. We are going to Imo state.
How many people do you target per outreach?
With the Ijede outreach, we targeted about a thousand; we are going up to maybe about 1500. We want to help as many people as we can, small numbers, large numbers, we just want to touch and affect as many lives as we can and we need all the support we can get.
