Can you imagine a 5 year old child, alone and begging in the streets? What about rummaging through a gargage pile for food if the begging isn't successful? Impossible as this sounds, this is an everyday occurence in the cities of Northern Nigeria. Males from the ages of 5 to 15 are sent to the Northern cities to learn the Qur'an and a marketable skill. They are solely dependent on the teacher(malam) and fellow disciples(almajirai) for their daily food. Because of the scarcity of food in the area, they resort to begging and pleading for spare change, food or any gift that someone might offer. "Allah ya ba mu alheri" is their begging cry which means "May God give us grace". All too often the response they hear is "Allah ya ba da sa" which means "May God provide". A polite way to say "I have nothing for you".
Poor Muslim farmers who cannot afford to feed their children go through a thought process similar to this "Since I cannot afford to feed the boys here, I will send them to the city where they can learn the Qur'an and get a job." Though they do study the Qur'an for a few hours every day, these boys are unable to find work because they are uneducated, unskilled and have no experience. Their only chance for survival is to flood the streets and beg for handouts from anyone with means.
A major focus for Arewa Aid for the upcoming year is to hold workshops to teach basic farming skills. Our goal is to teach the Nigerians to produce and preserve food to last all year. One of our planned workshops is specifically intended to help remedy the plight of the almajirai. We intend to invite 20 of the students (almajirai), 10 of the teachers (malamai) and 5 sets of parents from the affected villages to come to our farm to learn basic principles for food production.
We plan to hold two vegetable production workshops during the upcoming year. In addition, our plan is hold a food preservation (canning) workshop to help preserve vegetables all year long. The cost of a single workshop is approximately $1,750. We need your help. Can your company, church or civic group become involved and sponsor one of these workshops? Can you help us as we teach these boys and other similar groups in Nigeria to become more independent?
Please help us, so that we can help them.
2 comments:
Awesome! This is what we have needed for our mission to succeed. We thank the Almighty for your administration of this important outlet. May our time, talent, and resources be devoted for His glory. God bless you my brother.
I worked on it last night and lost some of my final edits. I corrected it this morning.
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