5) Description of initiative: The project's main focus is the attainment of better knowledge of each other by Nigeria's ethnic, religious and political groupings in order to avoid occasional sporadic killings, often times on mere rumours, fuelling emotional attachments to these groupings to the detriment of one peaceful united nation. We are to achieve this through profesional peacebuilding technique of 'promoting interaction' refered to as contact hypothesis that canvass that interaction between individuals belonging to different groups will reduce ethnic prejudice and inter-group tension. The project is primarily addressing the preventive aspect of conflict management as the deep knowledge of each other would avoid the occurence of such violence and even if they occur the devastating effect would be minimal as the people imbibe a better understanding and cooperation. Our focus are two dimentional.First we introduce secondary (high)school students to the languages, culture, histories and religion of other societies in addition to their own in order to produce generational changes to attitude and orientate their perception of fellow Nigerians as being one and equal with right to life, respect and personal dignity. We also target adults in trouble flashpoints to reorientate their views and open up opportunities of sustainable learning about others in order to eliminate or reduce prejudice through education, community conferences, media campaigns etc. Thus the primary beneficiaries are school children and adults in past locations of such conflicts like Mile-12, Idi-Araba, Lagos Island etc as well as newly identified potential troupbe spots in the focus state of Lagos Nigeria. These people are to be trained as peer educators to reach out to others. we are going to train/educate the people on how to minimise or eliminate prejudice and highlight unity.

6) Description of innovation: Our approach differs from others as no such deliberate effort has been made to research into each of the three major tribes of Nigeria and use the findings to train people towards mutual cross cultural, faith and political understanding and sustainable peace and democracy in Nigeria. Hitherto most programmes have been on elitist workshops/seminars in top class hotels while we are using school and town/village halls. This is deliberate choice as we do not want to alienatethe people or major the project elitist which may not make us achieve our aim optimally. Our project has inbuilt feedback mechanism to help evaluate the progress made at intervals and make amends along to achieve maximum result.We are also having long term education or training that would evolve facilitors who may replicate the project in their communities. Another novelty is taking the message to school kids who are to form local clubs and networks to promote and sustain the aim of the project. We are also going to train the youth and women wing of political parties who has great influence on the entire political system and guarantee a better democratic future for Nigeria. A unique feature is combining training with advocacy (including distribution of information and education materials) as well as use of the electronic media) in achieving the goal of building a more united Nigeria where there would be no spontenous killings among Nigerians who hitherto seemingly lived happily together. It is disheartening to see people exhibiting seemingly high level of happy social interaction only to start killing one another the next minute based on reported issues that are supposed to be happening as near as the next door or as far as Europe or the Middle-East. In a nutshell, we are not merely addressing general conflict transformation or non-violence training but being more specific to particular tribes and groups and this makes for evolving of better results going by personal or group attributes.

7) Delivery model: Our delivery model is multi-dimensional including local workshops, one-on-one training sessions for adults, school groups for students, community advocacy, electronic media,interaction with community leaders etc. We would have fairly detailed IEC (Information, Education and Communication) materials aimed at achieving behavioral change. The school groups are to meet regularly to consider progress reports and contemporary case studies. Each host community would provide a local venue (school halls, town/village halls etc.)for the workshops and other educative meetings. we are to liase with market women and similar organization with whom we may partner to educate their members on the essence of living in peace inspite of our differences. For now we have restricted our use of local radio to free programme guest appearances to enlighten people about our concept while planning to have at least a thirty minutes primetime programme that would typically talk of each tribe or groups strong points and weaknesses and emphasise on how all these can work together towards making us a great democratic and economic nation. We would soon publish a pocket-size best practice guide towards positive inter-racial, faith and political relations.

8) Key operational partnerships: As a community oriented programme, we are drawing on our vast personal and organizational grassroot experience and network in Lagos state of Nigeria with Faith Based Organizations (FBOs), Community Based Organizations (CBOs) and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) who are primarily involved in grassroots development, education, criminal justice and peace related issues. We consider the communities as our major partners as we strive to get the support of major donor agencies and/or project implementation partners. We are thus partnering with community development associations (CDAs) in Lagos State who, as group of landlords and tenants, are veritable partners towards reaching the grassroots with the message. Our partners in the area of education would contribute their specialised expertise in teaching the people one-on-one as well as play key role in the workshops as resource persons. workshops would make great use of lical languages and have notable local leaders present. The peace experts would teach simple methods of promoting peace and how not to carelessly start a hate-row or violent session. All partners are located within Lagos state of Nigeria, readily available and within easy reach before, during and after each event. As member organization of West Africa Network for Peacebuilding in Nigeria (WANEP-Nigeria), we have access to professionals in sustainable peacebuiding.

9) Financial model: To start with, our Lagos office at Fadeyi area would be the central coordinating centre for the programme. A project website is under construction and we have gone to press with some of the handbills etc for behavioral change. Due to the recent suspected political killings in Lagos State in the run-off to the April 2007 elections, we intend to give greater focus to the political groups for now even though we are not abandonning the other components. Our plan is to minimise the cost as much as possible and for now our expense include publication, transportation and miscellaneous expenses. We usually get the host communities or schools to provide venue while our partners provide free resource persons. We would appreciate financial assistance that would enable us reach wider audience

          • Costs as percentage of income: 80%

          • Financing: For now, this free service is being financed through the contribution of members/board of trustees and this has its great limitations. However, we plan in the long term to ensure its financial sustainability by compiling our research findings into a volume and sell to plough proceeds back into funding the project, launch a train-one-true-Nigerian campaign to have people or organization take on the challenge at least making one person a true accomodating Nigerian. We are planning to get corporate sponsorship for radio and television programming, We intend developing and selling a school text to enrich the social studies subject in secondary (high) schools. Another plan is to enter into specific consultancy partnership with governments in Nigeria to replicate the project components etc

10) Effectiveness

          • Project outcomes: So far we have over two hundred adults and ten schools on the programme. We have done six workshops and printed/distributed some ten thousand handbills.The project has limited funds but we are encouraged by the fact that ours is a nationalistic one that would attract favourable attention from public, private and individual sources in due course. We have deliberately scaled down operations for now due to lack of fund.

          • Number of clients in past year: About two hundred adults have benefitted directly. We also have one thousand and fifty students spread over the ten schools covered so far. With an estimated indirect benefiary of at least five people per person trained, we project to have reached at least over six thousand people. The fact that we are realistically looking at what are peculiar to each part of Nigeria and seeking for ways to transform all the real and percieve positive and negative characteristics into a positive whole for national growth gives hope that more people would continue to show interes even though we have not satisfied the present demand for training.

11) Scaling up strategy

          • Stage of the initiative: Start Up stage.

          • Expansion plan: We are to cover at least four million of Lagos State's fifteen million population in first three years of operation. this would be achieved especially with the stepping up of the school-based component of the programme where students take message home to guardians, churches, mosques, town union meetings etc. Similarly the market women and political groups would enable us to reachout more. Our message is in tandem with religious teachings and through such organizations we plan to get down to the people. We expect to seek partnership with Lagos State government eventually to enhance our project delivery capability and acceptability rating.

12) Origin of the initiative: The initiative started by personal witnessing of sudden turning of friends into enemies leading to physical attacks based on ethnic, religious and political emotional attachments. One witnessed the Hausa/Yoruba Idi-araba/LUTH as well as the Mile-12 market control violent conflict between the same ethnic groups. The Yoruba/Igbo traders skirmish in Lagos Island, etc. Of recent is the spate of attempted or successful political killings of public office seekers in the state as the nation prepares for the 2007 elections. Rising unemployment is creating a class of assasins in Nigeria ready to kill at will. The area boys (miscreants) scenario, the numerous christian/muslim face-offs especially on issues arousing emotional feelings. As a trained conflict transformer and peace expert, one feel touched by these developments and set out to seek for solutions.

Contact Information:
Cassim  Adepegba
President
Ihsan International
(Non-Religious, Non-Profit, Non-Political and Non-Government Organization)
P. O. Box 636, Ota, Ogun State
Nigeria
Tel: 234-802-8416434
Fax: 234-39-721144
Email: ihsan_int@yahoo.com