Folarin Kehinde

As part of efforts aimed at ensuring the well-being of victims of child trafficking, sexual and gender-based violence, (SGBV) a non-governmental organization, Auxano Foundation has rehabilitated over 500 survivors in Nigeria.

The organization underscore the need to assist the vulnerable from
dehumanizing and exploitative contradictions and usage while ensuring social justice in line with Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) 3,4,5, and 6.

Convener Auxano Foundation, Lawrenta Igoh while speaking in Abuja at the Survivors Leadership Forum (SLF) and the Launch of the Survivors Book Club stated that the initiative was borne out of the need to help and active volunteerism from professional team members, emphasizing that government can not curb the scourge of SGBV and child trafficking alone, hence all hands must be on deck to nip this in the bud.

Igoh explained that one person can make a positive difference while encouraging others to get involved adding that more than just asking what the government can do, one can actually just decide what
can be done by contributing in helping to uplifting their community and neighborhood irrespective of challenges.

Meanwhile, Igoh stated that in 10 years, Auxano Foundation has given 10 communities access to potable drinking water in the rural parts of Nigeria and have offered several corporate social responsibility to underserved and therapeutic treatments to survivors of child trafficking.

“We have achieved quite a number of tasks in 10 years. For instance, what the most interesting success story I like to talk about is that we are able to give 10 communities access to clean
water in 10 years. And these communities are not communities in the city.

“They are located in very secluded and marginalized places. And this was achieved by contribution from people who choose to be anonymous, individuals within Nigeria. It helped me to feel like we as a country, we can solve most of our problems if we look inward.
And then volunteer members like our team, contributing time, expertise, money, resources to do things each and every day. Going to communities on Saturdays to conduct research.

“Meeting people, trying to understand them from their own realities. And coming back to advocate on their behalf has been one of those feats. So we’ve been doing
a lot of scholarship for children. In 10 years, we have 45 children in school and counting. And then under our team on health, at least over 500 survivors have received free medical and
therapeutic treatment. She stated.

Also speaking at the event, Program manager, Auxano Foundation, Ele-Ojo Ochai on her part stated that the Survivors Leaders Forum is a platform aimed at consolidating previous leadership project for survivors in the past while forming alliance whereby survivors can
interact, support, elevate each other, share stories, grow and heal together.

Ochai explained that the book club which started in 2024 was inspired by
Father William with inspiration which reasonates with the survivors.

“We saw it as an initiative to share more books with these children to facilitate their healing journey from past trauma. So it’s something I’ll be holding once in a quarter, once every quarter, we’ll have different books.

“We’ll be having it once every quarter for as long as possible. It’s just, you know, literature is a form of self-expression. And we believe it can also be used as a form of therapy for these children to heal, to express themselves.”

Meanwhile, Ochai attributed lack of fund as a major challenge hindering greater intervention for the foundation while calling on donor organization and well meaning Nigerians for support.

“The major challenge is funding.
Yes, because it’s actually, like I said, it’s a volunteer life. So the major challenge we have is funding, because like I say, we are all volunteers.

“So a lot of these projects, they are out of pocket or maybe just as organically. People here and there, they will know that we need to donate to such causes. And well, at times there’s a little
bit of bickering with the government, because like when we go to some of these villages to cooperate with the people, at times we have not really had so much of those. But you know, this issue of bottlenecks in communities, you have to meet chiefs and things like
that. But we have a way, but it’s still a little bit of a challenge.”

Coordinator of medical services of Auxano Foundation Dr. Opeyemi Muili disclosed that the foundation will focus on a health care and empowerment for at-risk and trafficked survivors (HEARTS) projects is aimed at addressing critical health needs of survivors through education and therapeutic treatments.

“We provide them with water, safe water, safe and potable and affordable water. So it has really been a lot. It has been eye-opening. We’ve been able to impact lives. We’ve gotten feedback from people, survivors that we didn’t even know had mental issues. We’ve been able to help them get over these issues.
And we’ve been able to also take care of their physical health.”

Meanwhile Muili also solicited for partnership and funding to expand their scope of humanitarian services.

“Right now we are looking for partners, sponsors and donors so that we can actually do more than this. Instead of just limiting what we are doing to victims,
like survival at shelters.

“There’s nothing stopping us from taking this across the country.
Nothing stopping us from looking at the vulnerable people, the vulnerable population. Which we’ve started doing in other communities, like Nasarawa, Kefi. We are going outside of even
the North Central.

“So by the end, you should expect us to expand. We are going to expand all our services. Physical services, mental services, and health services in general.”. She added.