Entrants's Name: Aniekwe Chika Charles

Country: Nigeria

Field: Citizen/Community Participation

Innovation - idea: Developing a methodology whereby the civil society can engage duty bearers to demand thier right to end poverty. Through a thorough training and advocacy skills, the civil society would be able to ask questions concerning issues of governance in the society.

Innovation - why it is pioneering: The project is unique in that it will equip the society to realize that power belongs to them as as such make them demand proper accountability from public servants. We have already started traing in varios zones in the Federal Territory and hope to extend it to other State to ensure its proper workability.

Strategy - how it achieves impact: it will raise the level of awareness on the part of the civil society to knowm that it is their rights not to be poor. It will train them to know that the public servants are supposed to allocate resources to the betterment of all and not ot a few individuals. it will help in fighting corruption to finish in Nigeria since every public servant will be careful of what the civil society would do. it will all in all bring about accountability and an end to poverty.

Strategy - growth plans: The project started last year and it tends to continue till it achieves its aim. It first started with six states as its focal states and hope to spread it to all other states of the federation. Its is EU sponsored project and the scale up will continue soonest in six more states. The intresting thing is that as we train people, they also train others in their nearest vicinity via a corrobration between us and them. This will no doubt bring dessemination of the idea.

Impact to date: since the kick off of the project, we have trained 240 people and these 240 have equally replicated our target.Our target is to train 40 per State and that was achieve in the inception phase. these 40 per state has trained 40 each and we facilitated the training. As we go into the next phase will train another 240 from six states and such we equally be replicated. This no doubt will spread to bring about group of energetic, non violeny people that can ask questions and how the government of their varios staes are been ran. Our training equally touches area of Budget Monitoring and tracking which will teach them on the skills on how to monitor and track budget with nocessarilt being violent.

Future impact: Looking at the next ten years , Nigeria would be able to compete in the commitee of nations . This is because of the fact that we have the resources and the man power and if we shurn corruption which our training will ensure. The project will have trained future leaders with good leadership qualities thereby lifting nigeria to the level a global power economically. In the near future

Sustainability - resource base: The project will no doubt be sustained. ActionAid international Nigeria is working with the poor and exclded to bring about an end to poverty and the project is sponsored by EU project with first four years and another possible year depending on the impact on the civil society. so the sustanability will be possible as the impact is already noticed in the society we have worked on.

Major challenge for the field: The major challenge I see is the change in the orientation of Nigeria to believing that it will be possible to change the nation. Building a culture of a free and just society also reamins a challeng.e

Contact Information:

Name: Aniekwe Chika Charles
Country: Nigeria
Website: www.actionaid.org