About Us

REIWA was registered with the Nigerian government's Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC 21770) in 2006. Foundation staff had worked for several years in Cross River state with a close partner Development in Nigeria (DIN), a forest conservation and sustainable livelihoods NGO. Working with partners including DIN, REIWA seeks to make a difference to the poorest of rural poor, notably migratory groups, women, children  and landless farmer youth.

Currently, we are working in six states. These are Bauchi, Cross River, FCT, Kaduna.  Katsina, and Plateau. 

Reiwa's focus on education for empowerment is driven by the supreme importance of educating all Nigerians for sustainable development in the twenty-first century. Only 24% to 50% of children in some northern states are enrolled in school; of pastoralists (who number 10-14 million),  zero to two percent are functionally literate. Rural primary and secondary schools lack text books, paper-based learning materials and infrastructure.

The Nigerian government is putting in place important reforms. These reflect the need to empower teachers and children to make use of educational materials on the Internet to compensate for the dearth of books. It also reflects the need to target senior primary school children for training in basic computing and use of the Internet, so as to motivate them to want to continue with their education at junior secondary level, and not to drop out.

ICTs can give Skills for Life in the 21st century to all people, young and old, of whatever ethnic group and gender.

Restive pastoralist and farmer youth, largely unemployed, previously hostile to literacy are highly motivated to learn by the visual and hi-tech appeal of the lap top or PC.

Therefore, REIWA prioritizes training teachers, literacy instructors and community stakeholders in basic ICTs.  They become skilled in adopting hands-on, problem solving learning in the classroom and nomadic camp (ruga). Teachers, children and women learn through use of computers and the Internet (e-mailing). Various users and visitors are posting up comments on our  Visitor's Book, chatting on our Forums, and will soon participating in our e-classroom. 

Muslim women, newly literate, thanks to our instructors, are now benefiting from basic computing training. They are emailing other learners in REIWA's schools' e-network, and shortly will begin to use the Internet to download market and other livelihood information (e.g. crop and beef prices, animal health and disease prevention visual aids).

The next step will be training these women (and unemployed youth) in applying micro-enterprise skills and in use of the Inter Net  (via cyber cafes or I-mobile phones) to learn about profitable value-adding activities backed by  micro-credit for improved income generation. 

 

 

 

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