By DADA AYOKHAI
A humanitarian arm of the Apostlic church of Nigeria, tagged New Apostolic Center for Development, NCD, had drawn the curtain on her six months awareness project which focus was on preventing Trafficking in persons and responding to Gender violence.
In a press briefing that took place in Benin city, a member of the Board of Trustees( Bot) of the faith based organization, Mr oriakhi Victor said the press conference was to highlight successes recorded and also showcase areas for follow up so as to sustained the fight against human trafficking and gender based violence in the State.
According to Mr oriakhi, “the Project activities were built around collaboration with these government agencies, CSOs, journalists and others, capacity building around legal framework on human trafficking, GBV as well as government response, extensive public awareness activities involving town hall meeting, development and airing of radio jingles, featuring on radio to discuss the issues, design and dissemination of newsletter, the sharing of podcast on social media, production of IEC materials and press conference.
Mr oriakhi further said the goal of the project was to further increased the awareness of the danger of trafficking in persons and improve response to sexual and gender based violence. .
He listed the objectives of the project to be strengthen the capacity of women led organizations and vulnerable groups ;
understanding the provisions of relevant laws that responds to trafficking in persons and GBV in Edo State;
*Undertake public awareness activities to prevent trafficking in person and increase awareness on the role of the sexual assault referral Centre (Vivian Centre) in Edo States.
The board member of the faith based organization gave the organization a self accessment pass mark , “We are glad to inform you that the project has largely achieved the purpose for which it was designed and has also thrown up emerging issues that will require follow up actions by civil society organizations, media and the public.”
“The training and extensive public awareness activities have led to more citizens accessing the Edo State Sexual Assault Referral Centre (Vivian Centre) to report GBV cases. Record obtained from the Vivian Centre showed that the centre recorded more cases between June and November 2022 when NCD implemented the preventing human trafficking and responding to gender based violence in Edo State project.
“As at the time the project commenced in June 2022, the centre had received only about 600 cases since inception. But by November 24”, 2022, the number of cases reported to the centre increased to 1079 and some of the victims confirmed that they knew about the centre from the radio programme. This shows that out training and public awareness initiatives got to the target audience. As we speak now, NCD’s radio jingle is still running on KU FM, Benin City, 7.56am and 4.56pm daily, till about early January 2023.
Continuing, Mr oriakhi said the body has in order to sustained the tempo of the project set up a desk office to handle sexual and gender based violence referral issues in the state.
