What its all about?

The EqualAccess DB Scale-up project is a follow-up project of the Rural, Urban Rightful Project. It will address the challenges caused by the displacement setting issue that arose out of the Fulani-Herdsmen Crisis, such as a proper database and management structure to monitor, track, and assess the residents living in camps, create a whistleblower program to decentralise the existing power relations existing in camps and in addition empower women and girls with skills to build financial resilience. 

What Issue are we solving?

Issues of human rights violations have continued to hamper progress at the displacement camps in Benue, Nigeria. Despite progress made through the Rural, Urban Righful project, the camps still lack a proper database, monitoring, and management structure, an independent case reporting structure, and an empowerment program to support women and girls; financial shocks, unmanageable debt, and income vulnerability disproportionately affect women. 

Through the Rural, Urban Rightful project, we have found that through services, coaching, and support to build financial resilience and skill empowerment, many women and girls who depend on contributions and essentials at the camp would be able to better protect against these challenges. 

Approach 

Through the lessons learned from the Rural, Urban Righful project activities such as the art exhibition and co-creation labs, we have discovered that co-design and co-creation workshops, training, and development activities are instrumental to target groups involved and engaging in projects, taking ownership. Through dialogue with the women and marketplace research, it found that women and girls who are skilled and have access to business opportunities will be better able to protect themselves against sexual exploitation and be more confident in reporting cases as the women will no longer depend on the camp managers or humanitarian officers for essential needs. 

In addition, due to the lucrative nature of digital and tech skills, girls between the ages of 18-28 can be trained in the art of digital skills such as UI/UX design, web development, and product design. These girls can become disruptors in their host communities and Nigeria. 

This project aims to co-design three fundamental structures at the camp such as; 

• The implementation of a database monitoring and management structure where proper tracking, monitoring, and management of residents will be carried out and maintained pp

• managed through a centralized database software that allows registration of residents, record and update of the health and progress of each resident, their households and their exit from camp. This structure will curb the effect of a resident residing and benefiting from more than one camp and ensure that the information is available to support needs assessment for organizations to design their interventions based on the data from the database. 

• The co-design of a whistleblower program shifts power from the camp managers or humanitarian workers, who are often at the apex of the power to perpetrate human rights violations. The whistleblower will exist two-fold; first, as a simple USSD code which residents with access to any phone can report cases of human rights violations anonymously, and second through ‘moot shops” which will be set up on camp in partnership with Legal Aid Council where volunteer lawyers undertaking their compulsory one year of youth service can avail themselves on camps to listen to the residents and take on reports of violations recorded. 

• An empowerment program for 300 women using a six-strand project skill acquisition. The women will be grouped into any of the six categories: farming, creative arts, digital training, etc, to learn and get skills. After the training and production of services, a final one-time trade fair will be hosted to introduce them to the market. In empowering the women, their employability rates will increase and thus reduce dependence on the provisions from donations.