Our goal is to empower
widows
By CHRISTY ANYANWU
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
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•Mrs.
Mokolo
Photo by Sun News Publishing |
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Mrs. Princess Mokolo’s joy knew no bounds recently.
This was during the graduation ceremony of Luncinma Women’s
Development Centre. When it was time for her to make her speech,
she burst out praising God and dancing to the admiration of
the audience robed in the same academic gown as the graduands.
Mokolo, who is based in the United States, came home to witness
the fruition of her dream. It was the institution she started
about two years ago and it had produced people that would
further give back to the society what they have learnt from
the school.
Speaking with Daily Sun, she discloses why
she embarked on the project to help the young girls and widows.
"The idea initially was to take young girls that could
not make their UME and school certificates to train them.
They give them valuable skills so that they can be independent
and have their dignity. That way, they won’t be taken
advantage of by the unscrupulous men.
"When they secure admission into the university, they
could sponsor themselves and their academics won’t be
disrupted. That was the beginning of Lucinma. At the same
point, the Lord said to me, the young girls vision is fine
but what about their mothers and the widows? We have some
of the students that are the children of widows, and the problem
was that we were not able to train all the children of the
widows."
Mokolo noted that she was then inspired to train their mothers
and that was how they started the widows empowerment programmes."These
women are being trained in catering and home care skills.
With these skills, they are better able to train their children
if Lucinma is not able to train all their daughters.
"The organization therefore selected some women as beneficiaries.
They are those that have problems in their career, they got
impregnated and would go on leave. In some places, they do
night duties or they get married. I hope some other NGOs would
work for the men and together we can help our country to move
forward."
However, she appealed to some corporate bodies to help in
assisting the underprivileged in the society.
"We are hoping that some social responsible corporate
people would visit the centre. Although, we haven’t
made it a duty going from one office to the other asking them
to give us donations, we are inviting them to come and see
what we are doing. They should identify with our cause. We
teach them skills for life. We also involve them in multi-disciplinary
projects like hairdressing, catering, computer operation,
fashion designing and secretarial studies."
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