Associate Project Partners

Based on the information from paragraph 2.1 above, building up strong ties with local and international partners and stakeholders is very essential for the success and sustainability of this project now and in the future. In view of this, Finnish-Nigeria for commerce and investment developed a project set to curtail poverty in rural areas and assigned their welfare of-ficer Mr Obinna Kelechi Oliaku to collaborate with relevant NGOs, gov-ernmental agencies and private sectors.

Figure 1: Partner value matrix

The figure 1 above, showcases the key elements of the project partnership synergy to demonstrate how the collaborations added advantage such as youth and women, empowerment and education, which ultimately helps rural women to recognise their leadership, management and organisation-al potentiorganisation-als in the effort to curtail poverty in the society.

Figure 2 below shows the social welfare officer’s opening address at the training workshop in 2017. After which the baton was passed to the sec-ond speaker who led the training on new agricultural innovation break-throughs, as an effort to encourage women on the need for innovative ag-ricultural practices to alleviate food shortage in the community as demon-strated in figure 3 below, which was included as part of the project docu-mentation.

The process of developing this project with the topic: Building Synergy for SMEs in Ideato North local government area, was conceptualized in the beginning of 2016 as part of Finnico Organisations social welfare interven-tion in Ideato North local government area, and was scheduled to last for

three months for the first phase which was the field work proper, to achieve maximum impact, but due to paucity of funds, the project delayed.

Eventually, the first phase of the project which is pre-project planning commenced and lasted for three months, these includes the conceptual-ization of the project ideas, budgeting and partner identification, all these where handled by me as the supervisor from May to June 2017.

However, after securing partners and signing the partnership agreements, the field work of the project which includes data collections, data analysis and workshops commenced and was carried out between August to No-vember in 2017, that is August, September and NoNo-vember respectively.

The data collection exercise was carried out in the host community in Ni-geria using both paper questionnaire formats and online survey tool (sur-vey monkey).

After the completion of the second phase which is the field work, I Started in earnest to collect the findings, followed by the evaluation of the project outcome, and the writing of the report, this took me four months to com-plete, from December 2017 to March 2019. As the social welfare officer of the Finnico Organisation, I handled the core elements of the project from conceptualization, budgeting, partner identification, data collection, organ-isation of the workshop in cooperation with the local partners and relevant stakeholders, together we also draw the findings and evaluation.

I assigned the role of contracting the resource persons for the workshops and the handling of the logistics to the managements of Mind Miners Initia-tives, who are our local partners. For the fact that I am not a resident of the pilot community, I interfaced with the local partners during the re-search and proposals to draw the budget for proper checks and balances, with a view to maintaining quality and ensure that we meet up with the time frame.

Figure 2: Workshop Opening Address

Figure 3: Training on Agro Innovation

The workshop was segmented into three categories according to the indi-vidual needs of the participants, age, trade skills and educational back-grounds. The first group which was identified as group (A), received train-ings on new agro innovations (see fig.3), and soft skills, these includes business negotiating skills, persuasion, presentations and team work.

Group (B) where trained on food packaging and effective business net-working using modern social media platforms, while group (C) received trainings on new agro innovations and information on available agro sup-port loans.

Figure 4: Training on Women Empowerment and soft skills.

Figure 5: Cross section of the workshop Participants

Partners such as Mind Miners Initiative shown in figure 4 and 5 below, recognises the role of women in building a formidable poverty alleviation framework in collaboration with stakeholders. They believe that the role of women is important to the successful implementation of the subject of wel-fare intervention towards poverty reduction.

Most of our project partners worked in line with the Finnico Organisation project specifications to achieve the essential objectives through practical engagement with the community residents. Mind Miners Initiatives howev-er, spearheaded workshops and seminars, and outreaches to the less

privileged of the society. They have been at the fore-front in sensitizing, advocating and protecting women against such oppressive cultures like female genital mutilation, which is practiced in some parts of Nigeria, and also organise forums that centres mainly on steps for financial independ-ence, leadership, and socio-economic problems (Mind Miners Initiative Nigeria, 2019)

The stakeholders in their various capacities brought together their exper-tise in the full-scale project execution, evaluation and follow ups to ensure that Social welfare parameters were adopted throughout the project life cycle. The knowledge and field experiences of each of the partners, espe-cially Mind Miners Initiative as mentioned above, were also a key factor in the partner selection exercises. We also ensure that there was clear pro-ject-objective alignment for all the partners. This act was demonstrated by signing a memorandum of understanding (MOU) and a commitment agreement, which protects the project and the all the parties involved therein.