A 22-year-old undergraduate, Ms Ngozi Ufomba, has emerged winner of the Five Million Naira grand prize in the maiden edition of Brother’s Keeper Challenge, a humanitarian platform for the social-economic needs of local communities.
The event was organised by Citizen Journalists Network (CJN), a community of regular citizens who investigate local communities to find out their social challenges and look for practical ways to solve them.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that 24 youths, drawn from the six geo-political zones, contested for the prize at the grand finale of the challenge on Friday night at the Arts and Culture Centre in Abuja.
Ufomba, a final year student of Abia State University, is expected to expend the prize money on the identified social needs of her local community as presented in her proposal for the competition.
Also, Ms Joy Michael, representing the FCT and Mr Macualay Ufuoma, representing Delta State, emerged the first and second runners up, clinching two and one million naira respectively.
In line with the mandate of the CJN, they are expected to meet the humanitarian needs of their local communities.
In her speech, Ufomba, expressed delight over the feat, pledging her commitment to the mandate of meeting the identified social-economic needs of her community.
She said: “ My project is intervention, reconciliation and re-integration of street children, and I hope to effectively do this in my local community in Abia State”.
Mr Michael Duke, president of the CJN, told NAN on the sideline that the Brother’s Keeper Challenge was a flagship initiative geared towards getting people involved in meeting the needs of their immediate communities.
According to him, over 100 participants applied for the competition and attended orientation programmes across the six geo-political zones, and 24 participants made it to the grand finale.
He said camp activities, competition performances, audience voting and judges assessment, based on priority list, were criteria used in selecting winners, adding that other finalists will work as Ambassadors with the CJN in its programme across Nigeria.
“The Brother’s Keeper Challenge gathers participants from local communities all over Nigeria that understand the problems of such communities and can better proffer solutions to this problems because they are first hand witnesses.
“After proffering their solutions, we empowered them with materials and resources, and also test run their approaches for solving that problem to ascertain its viability.
“If it is successful at that level, such participants then make it to the national level where we choose the three best winners, who will pursue sustainable projects in their communities.
“Participants do not just win and we let them go, we shall work with them at every stage of the implementation, to ensure that the communities benefit from the projects,” he said (NAN)