By Busayo Obisakin | Executive Director
It has been a dream for a very long time to have a place where survivors of domestic violence could be spending time to move away from their place of abuse for their safety and sanity.
Shelter for the abuse is not something that is easy to come by in Nigeria. In fact, apart from Lagos and Abuja, it is only in three other states out of the remaining 34 states in Nigeria that have something like shelter for the abuse in Nigeria.
We have lost many lives as a result of not having a place to keep the women away from their place of abuse before their cases are being resolved and for about 4 years, this has been a serious burden in the heart of WIDC team.
Women Inspiration Development Center Shelter for the Abused became a reality through GlobalGiving Girls Fund Award and donation from one of the GlobalGiving Corporate partners.
Before we finished the three-bedroom flat shelter, 6 survivors were already waiting to occupy the place. One of them was a 14 years old mother that was impregnated by her step-father. To hide the crime, the mother of the girl when the pregnancy was beginning to show send the girl away from her husband house and brough her to a far away town and abandon her there in a dilapidated house and ran away.
The girl was there till she gave birth to her baby and was always on the street to beg for food. Her baby was 5 months old when she was rescued by our team.
Another of the survivors presently at the shelter was a 15 years old orphan with 34 weeks pregnancy, she gave birth to her baby last night. She was raped and held hostage by a drug addict. She had a lot of knife wounds on her body when she was rescued.
We are so excited at WIDC for the achievement of this shelter and we are so grateful to all the people that contributed to it through GlobalGiving Girls Fund Campaign. The shelter could accommodate 12 people at a time and will be servicing at least 6 states in the south-west of Nigeria.
We are aspiring to have a bigger shelter that could accommodate at least 50 people at a time and will be serving anyone from any part of Nigeria. It is a great need! We already have the landed property in the heart of Ile-Ife and fenced it with gate out of the fund we earlier got and the estimate to build is $45,000.
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