Think Creative Issue 8

Behind the Mask

Left: Bukar at work filming an informational piece about COVID-19.

their messages and instill fear in the minds of people,” says Bukar. Instead, he and his classmates have successfully used counter messages that focus on peace, unity and hope. Now 24 years old and the co-founder of an NGO called Co-Development Hub, Bukar tack- les another menace — COVID-19. His target is not the virus but the thousands of people traumatized by the pandemic, those who suffer from domestic abuse, and those who simply want to be involved in building community resilience. Funded by the Nigeria Lake Chad Basin (NLCB) program, an initia- tive of USAID’s Office of Transition Initiatives, the Co-Development Hub’s 70 trained volunteers cam- paign by leveraging social media, producing short videos and engag- ing neighborhood theater groups. “We have a lot of young people who have creative talents in Maiduguri, frommusic to comedy

to spoken word,” he says. The tens of thousands of inter- nally displaced persons (IDPs) make for one very tough-to-reach audience. “We have volunteers living in an IDP camp,” he says. “Even though they have little resources, they have been using their phones to produce videos, short clips of com- edy, and sometimes send messages that have to do with issues affect- ing them in the community.” The Co-Development Hub creates a dialogue among families and communities and ultimately directs audiences to NGOs that supply social- emotional support, counseling and other needed services. One result stands out. “It’s the sense of importance young people are having by seeing that they are in a position that represents their state in a very good light,” Bukar says. n

Crowdsourcing talent for COVID outreach Bukar Umara

Boko Haram viciously attacked Bukar Umara’s community in Nigeria’s northeastern Borno state in 2013, leaving him scared and outraged. Though still in high school at the time, Bukar chan- neled these emotions into action.

He organized his friends to launch their own platform— using words, not weapons — against the violent extremist group’s brutality. “I think one of the most effective tools for the violent extremists is propaganda, how they propagate

Educating women on virus prevention and care Hajiya Maryam Tamabari

Hajiya focuses her COVID-19 outreach on women in Nigeria’s Sokoto state.

For Hajiya Maryam Tamabari, it was no surprise that residents in the rural areas of Nigeria’s northern Sokoto state were skeptical of the COVID-19 pandemic. Many doubted that the virus was real or that it would ever reach them, says Hajiya. Hajiya is the Co-Founder and Chair of LOKABI Women, a volunteer group that promotes women’s health issues including prenatal care and HIV/AIDS prevention. She says that isolated communities often lack access to reliable health information. With the onset of the pandemic, LO- KABI Women set out to fill that gap and educate people on the threat of coronavirus, tackling “the myths and misconceptions about the virus that might lead to its spread.” Hajiya was facing more than just dis- trust. With only 25 members among

the ranks of LOKABI Women, the logistics to cover the 88 communities in Sokoto’s Wamakko Local Govern- ment Area have been a challenge. Quickly trained in advance and equipped with videos, photos, print- ed information and masks, volunteers arrived at communities where they worked with respected village lead- ers to organize orientation sessions that demonstrated handwashing techniques, physical distancing and other precautions. They focused these sessions on women. “I started raising awareness among women in the communities on pre- vention of the virus because women in our communities had limited in- formation on COVID-19,” says Hajiya, whose organization had previously collaborated with USAID’s Northern Education Initiative Plus.

Through the efforts of Hajiya and the other volunteers, communities in the Wamakko Local Govern- ment Area are better informed and better prepared. They now have many of the tools needed to stay healthier and safer during the pandemic. n

The availability of face masks in the rural communities posed another challenge. The volunteers trained 100 local women to produce and sell masks from their homes. This has pro- vided both much-needed income for these tailors and low-cost, accessible face masks for their communities.

Photos by Musa Gwary/Co-Development Hub (Bukar Umara); Hajiya MaryamTamabari

18 | Think Creative | Fall 2020