NGO Tackles Challenges of Motherhood in Young Women through Sensitisation

Kuni Tyessi in Abuja

A nongovernmental organisation, Community Initiative for Character Molding and Entrepreneurship Development (CICMED) has expanded its web of sensitisation in creating a new generation of young girls and women through teaching them by the ropes what motherhood entails in the twenty-first century.

Managing Director and CEO of the initiative, Kefas Elisha Tigga stated this in Abuja during the 2024 Future Planters Young Women Leadership and Entrepreneurship Conference with the theme: ‘Nigerian women taking ownership of a sustainable future’.

He said not knowing and understanding what motherhood should be like has become a dangerous situation for the future and it has become important to equip young girls and women with the right kind of information, right ideas, as well as the right connections for an average tomorrow.

Acknowledging the mindset of Africans and its communal nature, Tigga who stated that the organisation is putting in the young women how to create values within the system, have the right network, and how to be able to build a community, further reiterated that in the young women conference, the initiative is planting a seed for the future it hopes will be better today.

On the progress made so far by women in various sectors of the economy and its implication in a patriarchal setting, he noted that: “It scares the men a lot and reason is that the average man wants someone he can be in charge of and control because that is his orientation. But with the woman having the right kind of orientation, she will be able to educate him that she is not a threat. Most women coming up are really building it on their own without contributions from their communities.”

According to him, “A woman is indeed an embodiment of the entire system and it is important to be able to engage these young women. At this stage, they are actually the carries of the future. A woman averagely spends time with her children at home and these days most of the young women are having a challenge of what motherhood actually looks like. This is a dangerous situation for the future and for us to be able to get them at this stage is to equip them information and the right ideas as well as the right connections that they will be able to connect themselves for an average tomorrow.

“If we are able to catch them at this level, then we can be sure of the quality of children they will raise. Even the renewed hope agenda of the president starts with the younger women because for anything we are doing now, there’s already a distortion at the level of our character and values. So to begin all over is to begin with the mothers of the future babies.

“We are putting in them how to create values within the system, have the right network as the twenty first century is about beautiful networking and how to be able to build a community. It is a typically African thing for us because of our communal mindset.”

He said through the launch of the African Sapphire Magazine, it has built up a network into the system where it helps young people to get information about what is happening in government policies, idea’s and initiatives and also getting the government to know about what is happening around the youths, particularly women.