Digital Postcard from Nigeria

Anna Workman, CEDPA Advisor of Monitoring and Evaluation, writes from Nigeria, where she shadowed a team of CEDPA Community Health Extension Workers as they worked through their communities in the city of Jos (Jan. 30 - Feb. 13).

Supporting the Women of Jos

Jan. 31, 2007 — The city of Jos lies in the heart of Plateau State in central Nigeria. The city centre is alive with conversation and activity as market traders go about their day. Alongside the congested roads that cross through the city are densely packed communities, commonly made up of small family compounds where extended families occupy different rooms around a central courtyard.

It is in these roadside communities that CEDPA has been working to improve reproductive health since 2001 with funding from the Packard Foundation. A team of community health extention workers, known as CHEWs, dressed in white uniforms and armed with a kit of teaching tools and contraceptives go out into these communities each day to provide family planning information and services. These young, dedicated health workers go door-to-door, talking to men and women, old and young, about the importance of family planning for the well-being of women and families.

Our first stop was the home of the district head to inform him that I would accompany the CHEWs into one of the communities under his jurisdiction. His deputy, his assistant and his family welcomed us. They spoke warmly of the many contributions that CEDPA’s have made to their communities—not only in ensuring access to much-needed family planning services, but also in providing information about issues from basic hygiene to HIV/AIDS and malaria.

The district head’s wife described how project staff encouraged her to bring women in her community together to discuss family planning and reproductive health. Through this experience, she has come to recognize the power of mobilizing women for community development. She now calls meetings on other issues of importance to women in her community, which she believes have contributed to peaceful co-existence of diverse groups living alongside one another.

As we went out into the community, some of the CHEWs were met with friendly greetings from passersby. Each CHEW covers a particular community that she knows like the back of her hand. In her bag, she keeps a detailed hand-drawn map which includes every house that she visits and details about each client. It is their close relationships with community members that make the CHEWs so effective in their work.

As the CHEWs fanned out to travel to their respective neighborhoods, I know that each one touched many women’s lives, enabling them to make vital choices about the number and spacing of their children. In this way, CEDPA supports the women of Jos to realize the kind of future they want for themselves, their families and communities.

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