CHAIRMAN Board of Trustee, Kids With a Vision Foundation (K-WAVF), Professor Ezekiel Best has said that raising children in an African context was not for one but everybody’s business.
He said this in a one day Foster Care Information Conference held at Novel Suites & Resort Rayfield, Jos,recently, said that what K-WAVF is doing has purpose and directions; he called on the general public to bring in their ideas, since nobody has the monopoly of knowledge.
According to him, interest on children like K-WAVF do, is liken to Paul in Colossians 3:23 whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters.
In her opening remark, Global Director, K-WAVF, Mrs. Grace Adams Solomon said that, this is the first Foster Care Information Conference tagged “Family Based Care”, organized in Jos in order to give people out there the full knowledge about what it takes to foster a child and to adopt a child.
Solomon said that the conference was timely and its needed for the members of the society, churches, mosques, NGOs, community chiefs, security personnel’s, individuals and the general public to understand that; children don’t belong to Orphanages, the orphanages is suppose to be a transitional point, where we can just train the child for a little while they connect to family base care.
According to Vice President, Northern Region of the Association of Orphanages and Home Operators in Nigeria (ASOHON) Sandra Chikan this conference was organized so as to shift the mindset of people concerning model of care of the children in orphanages, most people feel that children should be in the orphanages, we say no to that.
“We understood by coming to embrace fostering, adoption, kinship care, reason being that children in orphanages have come from all sort of disadvantage background and they need stabilities. Every child needs a sense of permanency and family. And so we are calling on societies to begin to look at what they can do to take these children from the orphanages into their homes for fostering relationships.
K-WAVF is one of the homes that the national has been working with. Most of the children are already traumatize, they come from cases that have been abandoned, death sorrow and pains, these children have hope and future ahead of them”.
On his part, coordinator of Association of back2back, Plateau State Chapter, Mr. Daniel Asama in a discussion questions said that; what are some of the negativity–challenges in orphanages, why are people not fostering and adoption and so on, he said organization need to partner with orphanages during fostering/adoption process to enable a better home and a right place to foster children.
Highlights of the conference were one on one discussion, questions and answers from the participants, so many protocols where laid down before the programme start proper.
