The Rotary Club of Abuja Kubwa has called on well-meaning Nigerians to extend assistance to the less privileged, particularly vulnerable groups.
According to the Club, such gestures contribute to the socioeconomic growth of communities while indirectly addressing immediate challenges like insecurity and future issues such as unemployment.
Club President, Rotarian Idowu Olayemi, made this appeal in Kubwa, Abuja, recently during the presentation of grinding machines to a widow and two other struggling women.
Olayemi emphasized that the current global economic downturn has made it essential for the affluent to support vulnerable individuals, especially struggling women with families to care for.
She said: “This way, a lot of solutions would be found for many societal challenges.
“To empower a woman means the family is going to be taken care of, the education of the children, their feeding, and other necessary basic needs are assured.
“Invariably, the trained children would not only be useful to themselves but to the community as well, thereby contributing to the development of society at large.”
She said the choice of the beneficiaries of the grinding machine was well thought out, as a widow and two struggling mothers with three children each.
“The case of the widow was as unique as the other two. The widow lost her husband years back and has been surviving on a grinding machine to take care of herself and her children.
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“I used to patronize her whenever I was at the market, but sometime back, I noticed that she hadn’t been coming to the market for a long time.
“I never knew she was a widow, but I was just concerned that she wasn’t coming to the market, so I made efforts to get her phone number.
“I called, and she explained that the machine became faulty, and she had spent so much on it without much headway until it packed up completely.
“At that point, I asked her how life has been and what she was doing at the moment. She responded that she’d been at home since then doing nothing, and I asked how she’d been coping. In our usual parlance, she responded, ‘Na God o.’
“At that moment, I made up my mind that our Club should do something for her.
“Of the other women, one is a struggling mother of three, whom one of our members noticed has always been coming around their area for menial jobs.
“Very hardworking, but she will always go around begging for food because of the children.
“The story of the third was not so much different, so we decided to invest in alleviating their plights.”
Addressing the lucky beneficiaries, Olayemi, who led other members of the Club to the presentation, said, “This is part of our own way of empowering people, just to help you so that you can in turn be of help to your family and your children.
“These grinding machines have been given to you to help you generate income for yourself so that you won’t have to totally rely on your husband, neighbors, and friends for all your needs.
“Please, make good use of this and empower yourself.”
On behalf of the beneficiaries, the widow, Janet Baregi, while appreciating the members of Rotary Club Abuja Kubwa for the kind gesture, prayed for their individual and collective success in their endeavors.
“May the Lord of heaven replenish your pockets in the mighty name of Jesus. Where these ones came from, I pray that thousands of it will replace it in the mighty name of Jesus so that you will be able to stretch your hands and reach others in Jesus’ name,” she prayed.