- Peace Building
- Humanitarian Relief & Emergency Response
- Good Governance
- Economic & Livelihood(Skills Acquisition)
- Sustainable Agriculture
- Women and Youth
- Lenten Campaign
When communities are in conflict, growth and progress come to a halt.
Conflict and violence can cause significant setbacks in areas that are key to a community’s survival, like economic development, public health, safety and more. Today, more than 2,583,000 people across Nigeria are displaced due to conflict, terrorism and banditry.
Communities experiencing conflict have higher rates of poverty in comparison to more stable communities, and community members have a harder time accessing key resources like healthcare, education and a means of livelihood.
That’s why our work in Kaduna state and across Nigeria to help promote peace and defuse conflict is so important. We work with communities affected by conflict to promote peacebuilding techniques and address interpersonal conflicts before they escalate.
We engage young people who are usually used as perpetrators to instigate with opportunities for civic engagement and education about rejecting extremism. We support legislation that promotes peace and positive relations between governments and their constituents.
When we come together and help communities end conflict and build a path towards peace, we are all one step closer to building a sustainable future for our children.
Nearly every day, emergencies do occur and affect hundreds of communities in Nigeria and around the world, leaving people in urgent need of help to survive and recover. Communities in northern Nigeria have been in recent times worst hit by these disasters which are mostly caused by human activities such as communal violence, kidnapping, flood, extremism and terrorism.
Today, as we continue to help the most vulnerable people rebuild their communities and regain their livelihood, we are also creating partnerships to increase our emergency response to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. For most of the rural communities especially people fleeing conflict, living in poverty, or without access to quality healthcare—the coronavirus introduces a new and powerful threat that intensifies existing hardships.
As an organization under the Catholic Archdiocese of Kaduna, it is our mandate to uphold the principles and values of the Catholic Faith which is based on love. We are always on the front lines, meeting immediate needs with distributions of relieve materials to families affected such food, beddings, temporary shelters and health care. And we’re working to strengthen local businesses by supporting small-holder farmers and small businesses through this crisis.
The biggest roadblocks to effective and lasting development is weak governance. It compounds every other issue we’re working to address, like poverty, lack of education, food security, healthcare and insecurity.
In the areas we have worked across Kaduna state, we observed that most institutions often lack the incentives and ability to provide communities with the resources, services and tools they need to live the prosperous lives they deserve. Meanwhile, lack access to basic information about their rights and responsibilities, leading to distrust of decision-making processes, corruption and conflict.
That’s why we are working with the government on all levels and informal governance institutions to better serve their constituents and foster growth in their communities. Good governance is critical to successful developmental outcomes.
Good governance means investing in community leaders to hold their political actors and their parities responsible, ensuring that they serve their constituents well. It means harnessing the collective abilities of these communities and increasing citizen participation in the decisions that affect their lives. Finally, it means taking part in general elections to vote incompetent individuals to promote good governance.
To us at Justice Development and Peace Caritas, development means building a world in which we all live without fear of hunger and injustice, peacefully co-existing, providing for ourselves and protecting our planet.
We focus on the root causes and multiple effects of poverty and on bringing the empowered voices of communities into the political process. Kaduna State is the third largest populated (2006 census) with over 6Million people. Fifty-Six percent are young adults mostly underemployed and unemployed. Development and Peace Initiative had taken deliberate steps to contribute to the SDGs No 8.3 that “promote development-oriented policies that support productive activities, decent job creation, entrepreneurship, creativity and innovation, and encourage formalisation and growth of micro small and medium enterprises including access to financial services”.
And this has become a yearly programme of building the capacities of women, men, young and adults in ensuring jobs and wealth that are created to reduce poverty and hunger. Poultry and Fish farming, Welding, Carpentry and woodwork, Beads Making, Hair Dressing, Sewing and Fashion Design, Satellite and Dish Installations, Knitting, Soap and Cosmetology, Make-up, Catering and Decoration are the different skills being impacted to our teaming young adults across the Archdiocese of Kaduna and its environs. A total of 2, 546 were trained as at 2016 batch while the 2017/2018 batch that started in July 2017. The skills acquisition training program still running annually.
Agriculture is the primary means of food security for the large Nigerian population.
So many communities in Nigeria face incredible obstacles: soaring prices for food, seeds and fertilizer for crop production, outdated technology, unfavorable or limited access to markets and financial services, and poor soil and water management.
But with strategic investments and technical support, smallholder farmers hold the potential not only to improve their lives but also to contribute to a more productive, robust and inclusive food and agriculture system.
That’s why we help them increase productivity by focusing on improving agriculture-related products and services, working with traders, input suppliers, processors and government bodies. And our strategic and sustainable approach to motivate and empower youth to transform tomorrow’s agriculture.
In the past few years, we have been recording tremendous progress in improving women’s and girls’ human development. Unfortunately, challenges remain. Girls’ and women’s access to education, healthcare and employment still lags behind that of their male counterpart.
The inclusion of women and girls in development is critical. They play key roles in food production, child health and nutrition, and improving livelihoods, education and economic development. Most importantly, deliberately including women and girls translates into helping them claim their basic human rights.
The Lenten campaign helps to sustain the livelihood of the poor and marginalized.
So many people find it difficult to sustain their families with the meagre income that they gain. Smallholder farmers, women and young people in our communities that have been supported through the proceeds of our Lenten campaigns have seen tremendous improvement and increase in their means of livelihood. They are now practicing intercropping and multi-cropping to get better yield in farm produce, more women and young people have now acquired entrepreneurial skills in poultry farming, catering, ICT and so much more which gives them alternative sources of livelihood to sustain their family needs and requirements.
Livelihood in Rural communities especially in Kaduna state has an enormous intensity of unspoken and untold stories of struggles. Every day is a fight to survive and earn to feed the family. The option of livelihood from agriculture or alternative mode of income is slowly diminishing. The root cause is a lack of skills and economic opportunities. Agriculture has become a less profitable source of livelihood.
This lent season, Justice Development and Peace Caritas(JDPC) Kaduna is raising awareness and seeking support for the poor and marginalized through its Lenten Campaign against “Hunger and Disease and poverty” by running the ‘Sustain Life: Sustainable Livelihood’ campaign.