Support for the elderly, disabled, and the very poor has been the starting point for this community support program.

This segment comprises those in the community who are either too old to provide for themselves and have nobody to support them in any meaningful way or are disabled and face significant challenges in doing so.

They are therefore constantly on the verge of starvation and do without many of our basic needs especially because there are no social safety nets or support programs available to the community.

This is an additional reason why support for the elderly, disabled, and the needy was identified as our number one priority.

The first was the desire to follow the examples and footsteps of our mother and grandmother whose name the foundation is named after. Our mother and grandmother - Hajia Fatimetu - became the go-to person in the community who helped anyone who was hungry. She was sure to share whatever was within her disposal to help the needy. She was one of the very few fortunate people in the community who had children who were able to regularly meet her basic needs which most others lacked. She taught her children that whatever was divisible was sharable no matter how little it may be. It would, therefore, be a sin in her expectation of her children and grandchildren to eat the little they have alone, without sharing with any neighbor who may equally be hungry but did not have anything to eat.

The Odighie community and surrounding communities are rural communities with nothing else in the form of occupation for the generality of the population but subsistence farming.

In earlier times when a family was made up of parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and growing children, subsistence farmers were able to feed themselves most of the year until the next planting and harvesting seasons. But with the dawn of the modern age, the decimation of our economies, and the attractions and allure of life in the cities, and with most of the grown-up (adult) children leaving home to join those who have already fled the travails of the rural communities, subsistence farming was no longer even enough to feed the family.

With the communities now being mainly inhabited by the very old and the very young, who are either too old or too young to do any physical work on the farms, poverty, hunger, and stagnation in development have become the order of the day.

While we learned the art of giving and sharing directly and indirectly from our mother and grandmother - Hajia Fatimetu, one of her children had a direct personal experience with the effect and impact of lack of basic support in this area.

Zikanene Isu, son of Hajia Fatimetu was fortunate enough to be one of the very few from the community who was able to get to high school at all. Being able to do so at that time was considered a great achievement. His father, Alhaji Isu Ladah Taobe, and his brother Alhaji Ali Isu (May they find favor in the hands of benevolent angels), did everything they could to see him through secondary education with a strong hope and determination to be able to complete secondary education. But unfortunately, due to financial challenges among other things, he could not complete secondary education. He had to stop at secondary four (4) out of six (6) when unfortunately the challenges had become too much to contend with. Zikanene continued with an unyielding determination to want to get his GCE (the equivalence of the Western GED) which would qualify him to enter the university in the continued pursuit of higher education. For reasons too numerous or too petty to mention here, it took him ten (10) years to obtain what he would have obtained within one year if the financial resources and other needed support and resources were available. With his unyielding determination, Zikanene was finally able to gain entrance to a university at the age of 33 and obtained two bachelor's degrees at the age of 37. He was also able to obtain his Master’s degree when he was already above the regular retirement age of 65. What wasted years and wasted talent just because of the lack of the supporting network and economy that would have allowed him to achieve his aspirations decades earlier? Zikanene Isu is the initiator of the Support Foundation for the community he left more than fifty (50) years ago. Fifty years of stagnation, fifty years of all the youths deserting the community for lack of opportunities in the community that have nothing else to offer them but poverty, penury, and hopelessness.

What Do We Intend to Do With This Aspect of The Foundation?

The youngest child of Zikanene Isu - Halima, now 24 years old, on hearing this story said, “Never again, Never again, Never again, will any child of school age in Odighie and surrounding communities suffer the fate her father suffered. That is a big promise, but we believe that starting with baby steps, this avowal of Halima can come to fruition when Fatimetu Support Foundation reaches its desired goals of helping and support to all those in need in the communities.

With this vow in mind, we intend to start with the following:

Identify and help with school materials such as books, uniforms, and supplies for primary and secondary students whose parents are unable to afford them.

Identify and help to pay fees for transition examinations such as WAEC and NECO and other qualifying examinations for those unable to afford them.

Helping those who gained entrance to higher educational institutions augments their parent's and guardians’ support.

This aspect of the Foundation Activities which will be in liaison with the local school's management, has not yet started, but it will in due course as our funding improves with the expected needed support.

Acquisition of basic skills is a bane of the Odighie community. Presently, this is very pitiful in Odighie where the very basic services like dressmaking, carpentry, and barbering are done in other communities outside the Odighie community. A sad commentary on this was the experience of the Infrastructure Co-ordinator of Fatimetu Foundation - Alhaji Alasa Saiu who had to import basic labor like carpenters, masons, electricians, roofers, and welders from far away Lagos and Enugu for the buildings being constructed for the Skills Acquisition Centers. This is because, to his dismay and disappointment, he could not find knowledgeable and reliable skilled workers in the local communities to do these basic jobs because of a lack of skills to do so. As of the time of this write-up, close to N10,000,000 (about $28,000) has been spent on these structures, with the bulk of the labor cost going outside the communities to those who have the skills. It would have been helpful to the communities if the money for labor was earned and retained by the community residents.

Fatimetu Support Foundation has chosen as one of its activities the establishment of a Skills Acquisition Center at Odighie to offer training in some selected basic skills. Skills chosen to start with include but will not be limited to the following:

Tailoring and Dress Making. Tailoring and dress-making are basic skills necessary in any community. Everybody needs and wears clothes. This is especially true in a culture that is not yet used to ready-made clothing and where there are no established clothing stores. This being a basic need in the community, fulfilling the needs elsewhere, and taking the limited financial resources out of the community to outside communities can only help to continue the circle of poverty already very prevalent. The structure for this has already been built and the sewing machines and equipment have already been procured and installed awaiting the commencement of training which started on December 5th, 2020 - the 3rd anniversary of the passing of Hajia Fatimetu.

Barbering, Hair Dressing, including the native (Agbede Style) Hairdo: This is also a basic need, as basic as tailoring and dress-making skills, which contribute to the community becoming self-sustaining in some basic services, instead of going outside the community to obtain them. The Structure for this is also ready as it is the same structure as the structure for the Tailoring and Dressmaking skill acquisition program. The equipment is also already procured and installed.

Bakery: Some baked food items have become staple foods for many communities. Bread has become such a staple that most communities cannot do without it. In addition, some basic farm products like plantain, coco yam, yam, and corn/ground-nut cakes (avuoka or donkwa), which usually will perish without adequate preservation or that may be seasonal can now be turned into preserved and commercial baked products. Producing such baked goods can help in developing useful skills that contribute to self-sustaining activities, in addition to developing commercial skills. Those who visit the cities both within Nigeria and outside the country will tell you that plantain chips (a product from a common and staple farm product - plantain), are one of the most expensive snack money can buy even in these large and so-called more civilized societies. It will therefore be nice if such products can be sourced cheaply from the farms and turned into baked products that can be consumed locally and sold to outside communities by those members of our community who may develop the needed commercial skills as a result of the opportunities provided by the skills acquisition center. The structure for this is under construction and it is planned that the commencement of this Bakery Skills Training will be by the beginning of 2024 hopefully with the availability of funds which is when we hope to be able to acquire the bakery equipment after the completion of the building. In addition to the above advantages, farmers will now be encouraged to grow these staples in larger and commercial quantities which will in turn improve their quality of life.

Carpentry: Carpentry is also a skill needed by almost everyone. It is sad that during the construction of the skills acquisition centers, there weren’t enough carpenters, plumbers, or blue-collar workers to retain the wealth in the community. Such is the value of any skills acquisition, especially the most basic ones such as carpentry.

The structure for carpentry is not yet constructed. This will be next the project after the present ones are fully functional

The lack of infrastructure is yet another bane of not just rural but almost all communities in Africa. Our roads are poor, our power supply is basically none existent, and our lack of access to water is unbearable and oppressive. This lack of infrastructure is not only dangerous it facilitates a cycle of poverty that seems endless. We want to create change if only starting from Odighie, extending to surrounding communities, and then more communities across Africa.

A basic drawback in achieving our goals of helping to support the community in their varied needs is also the lack of the necessary infrastructure and structures for our activities. There are no existing structures for rental from which we could begin our activities. It dawned on us early that we have to build everything from the start for our goal of helping with skills acquisition programs to come to fruition. On this, we completed or are in the process of completing the following structures:

Building for Tailoring and Dress Making; Hairdressing and Barbering Center. - Completed

Building for the Bakery Center - started but not yet completed.

Building or Container for Carpentry - Not yet started.

Construction of a Borehole or Well for the Provision of Water for the various activities - completed

Extension of water to the community at a point convenient enough that members of the community can easily get the water they need - started but not yet completed

Extension of Electricity supply to the Skills Acquisition Center from the road by purchasing and installing the necessary cables, poles, and other materials - Completed