Sagamu Community Centre, Sagamu, Nigeria
Sagamu Community Centre 1a, Baruwa Street, Ijoku, Sagamu, Ogun State, NIGERIA Director: Olubukunola Jeminusi [email protected]
Sagamu Community Centre (SCC) is a grassroots NGO in Sagamu, a semi-urban town 60km north of Lagos, southwest Nigeria. The Centre was established in 1996 by the collaborative effort of the Sagamu Local Government (SLG), the Olabisi Onabanjo (then Ogun State) University Teaching Hospital (OOUTH), ethnic and local professional groups including the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW), National Automobile Technicians Association of Nigeria (NATA), Hair dressers/barbers’ association, etc. This was made possible through the assistance of the (then) British Overseas Development Administration (ODA), which later became the Department for International Development (DFID).
Between 1997 and 2003, SCC implemented the DFID-funded STD/HIV/AIDS Management Project in Ogun State (one of the two project sites in the country). Pathfinder International, Nigeria and Liverpool Associates in Tropical Health (LATH) managed the project. The Project deliveries were STD/HIV prevention, care and support services. The strategies were advocacy, IEC development and distribution, condom promotion, sales and distribution, trainings in STD syndromic management, peer education, family life education, etc; project staff capacity building, operations research, clinical management of STDs and opportunistic infections and institutional (OOUTH) facilities upgrade. Project beneficiaries were youths-in and out-of-school, PLWHA, long-distance truck drivers and other park users, automobile technicians, sex workers, commercial motorcyclists, market men and women, traditional health practitioners (including TBAs), religious and community leaders.
The DFID Project was the first major project of its kind in the LGA and in Ogun state. Project achievements included community acceptance of project after some initial skepticism, extensive STD/HIV/AIDS community awareness, establishment of satellite centers in the truck park and sex work location, creation of a support group of PLWHA, capacity-building of health care professionals in the public and private sectors and youth empowerment. The project achievements and impact in Ogun State contributed to SCC’s successes in obtaining funding for other projects from international donor agencies and selection of the Centre as the State Headquarters of Civil Society Organisations working in the HIV/AIDS sector. The first Director of the Center was invited by government to head the newly established State AIDS Control Agency.
Other significant projects are the Social and Economic Empowerment Project (SEEP) being funded by the Washington-based African Development Foundation, (ADF) through Diamond Development Initiatives (DDI), a Kano-based project management firm; and the HIV/AIDS Community Education and Outreach Project supported by the American Jewish World Service (AJWS), New York. The AJWS project ended April 2005. It focused on empowering youths in
such subject matters as Family Life Education, Reproductive Health and STD/HIV/AIDS through peer education training, seminars and sporting activities.
The ADF project started November 2003 and has been extended for 12 more months to April 2006 due to SCC's track record. Project activities already done include community advocacy, the successful conduct of a comprehensive baseline survey of the HIV/AIDS-related KAP of members of two rural communities in Sagamu LGA and peer education training. On-going activities are community drama as an IEC strategy and micro-credit loans for PLWHA.
Submmited by Jeminusi OA1, Oduwole MD2, Adetunji JO1, Ayantayo BT1, Akinleye JO3, Dada OA4, Zwandor AC5
1Sagamu Community Centre, 2Ogun State AIDS Control Agencies, Abeokuta, 3Pathfinder International, Nigeria, 4Centre for Research in Reproductive Health, Sagamu, 5UNAIDS, Abuja, Nigeria.