Education Nigeria Project #38578

ATP Community Medical Outreaches for Nigerian Kids

by ASK THE PAEDIATRICIANS FOUNDATION

Project Report | Oct 20, 2021
ATP KEEPS SCHOOLS SAFE FROM COVID-19; CELEBRATES 6TH ANNIVERSARY

By Dr Gbemisola Boyede | CEO and Project Leader

Ask The Paediatricians Foundation has continued to be active despite the ongoing Covid19 pandemic. We continued and rounded off support for our schools in keeping them safe from Covid19 which we started in June 2021. We have continued the ATP Supports Schools Against Covid19 Outreaches till September 2021 in more than 40 States and Zonal Chapters including Ghana our latest ATP Chapter and the first country chapter outside Nigeria. Through this project we have reached close to 500 schools throughout Nigeria and Ghana, donated more than 1500 500ml handsanitizers, more than 1500 cartons of Facemaks (each containing 50 units of facemasks), 4,000 large posters to remind school communities of the Covid19 prevention messages and lot of other hygiene materials. We are looking forward to our post-intervention impact survery at the end of the year to see how our support has made a dfference in all the schools visited. Most of the schools were very full of gratitide to Ask The Paediatricians Foundation for their support. Some of the videos from the events are available on our Instagram and Facebook pages.

Unfortunately due to the local unrest and high spate of kidnappings; we were unable to reach schools in Kaduna, Niger and Imo States. Our volunteers in these locations are however eager and would still do the outreaches and give out the materials as soon as schools resume fully and they are happy to welcome us. As the Covid19 pandemic begins to ease; we look forward to resuming our full outreaches in 2022. Our usual October community outreaches were also put on hold as well. We have limited ourselves to schools in order to follow the Covid19 protocols and guidelines.We are very grateful to all who have supported our outreaches to the schools especially our regular donors.

Despite the pandemic, we celebrate our 6th anniversary for one week in July and it was a time to celebrate our hard-working volunteers. The anniversary week kicked off with the opening ceremony on Sunday followed by our 2 day Online symposia with the theme "|Holistic Child Care in the 21st Century" The symposia featured presentations by different health professionals, non-health professionals and parents. Regular side atttractions including ATP Babies of the year and Volunteers recruitment campaign were also highlighst of the ATP 6th Anniversary celebrations. We also had beautiful stories shared by our beneficiaries online and offline. The week rounded off with the Awards Night followed by the anniversary parties in all the zonal chapters with some happening virtually and others at physical sites.

On the 31 July 2021, Our Lagos Zonal Chapter collaborated with the BestSprings Foundation in Ijegun for a community Outreach in Ijegun where we reached more than 100 children and adults. Ijegun is one of the underserved areas of Lagos that we have been supporting in collaboration with BestSpring Foundation since 2018. It was one of the communities we supported with the mobile clinic during the Facebook FCLP grant in 2019.

As we close these reports, we share with you some of the beautiful stories from our ATP volunteers and beneficiaries online and offline. We also thenk you for being part of our beautuiful 6 year stories of impact in Nigeria and the world.

On that faithful Sunday in 2016, I received a text from the present National Nurses Leader Moyosore Adeife that a Medical Foundation is about to kick start and Nurses will be needed in Lagos for the medical outreach. In fact the vision of the foundation wasn't clear to me until I got to Lagos(Makoko) as a Volunteer. The maiden outreach went viral on social media and it was a great move. 2nd medical outreach was held in Lagos, before it was extended to regional outreaches and now a national outreach. My first time in Kwara was through ATP...

I have learnt a lot as Nurse, a Volunteer and a Potential mom at ATP. As ATP volunteer I was inspired to build a Career in Paediatrics Nursing thanks to Dr Gbemisola Boyede for always motivating, encouraging and the opportunity to volunteer. I was able to attend different Conferences, Seminars and trainings. Networking is another thing have enjoyed so much in ATP, I have met many people in life just because am a Volunteer at Ask The Paediatricians Foundation. Happy Anniversary to all ATPIANS.

Hip Hip Hip Hurray

Oso E.A (R.N), Team Nursing Volunteer Ogun State Chapter.

After I had my baby, I was following some women's groups here on Facebook so one day, someone asked a child related question in one of the groups and as I was going through the comment, I saw a comment directing the woman to search for Ask the paediatrician on Facebook and join to get professional advice. I quickly searched, found and joined the group. From that day my story changed. As a first time mom, I didn't understand somethings and was always worried and wanting to go to the hospital even after my mum assures me it's nothing ( I only trust professionals in health related issues and also not a fan of self medication). I was advised by my neighbor to buy Abidec, some advised I give water even if am doing exclusive and my mum tried some herbs to help relieve my baby's colic. So many suggestions and advise. I was trying out some of the suggestions but as soon as I joined this amazing group and started learning, I threw away all the drugs and herbs and stopped giving water. Even after my mum left and my mother in law came, she always call me "Mrs know all" because I hardly agree with her and will always tell her what an learnt here concerning babies. Am so grateful for this group has helped me a lot. If not for ATP I would have been running to hospital every now and then as a first time mom. We have been off the hospital except for checking clearity sake and we are almost 6 months. I have been inviting family and friends to this group and I also share the link to some groups am following here on Facebook. God bless ATP and all the doctors. Happy Anniversary!

Sunshine Tina Ogoo, Ask The Paediatricians Facebook group

Today, we had the privilege of having the Ask The Paediatrician Foundation visit the Bestspring/AGGAI office for a medial outreach to our children and their mothers at Ijegun. Many thanks to the founder and director of ATP foundation Dr. Gbemisola Boyede for obliging us and bringing her team to cater for over 100 women and Children. We are grateful

Dr Albert Oikelome, Director Bestspring Foundation

ATP volunteers at Ijegun Outreach

ATP 6th Anniversary party Akwaibom Chapter

Dr Albert Oikelome with ATP volunteers

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Jun 22, 2021
ATP SUPPORTS SCHOOLS AGAINST COVID19 CAMPAIGN 2021

By Gbemisola Boyede | Founder/CEO

As an organization that is committed to the wellbeing of children; Ask The Paediatricians Foundation completed a survey of 200 schools in Nigeria to see how the schools are faring with the current Covid19 global pandemic and how we can support schools in keeping our children safe from Covid19 infection while they are learning. We discovered major gaps in the schools preparation and readiness to comply with the national guidelines for prevention of Covid19 infection. Majority of the schools (87%) expressed their need for awareness training and donation of hygiene items for their school communities to be able to comply with the prevention guidelines. Ask The Paediatricians Foundation then embarked on a project tagged "ATP Supports Schools Against Covid19 Awareness Campaign" with the aim of reaching 500 schools in Nigeria and Ghana with health education and awareness training on Covid19 prevention while also supporting with basic items such as facemasks, hand sanitizers, reminder and awareness posters.

Ask The Paediatricians Foundation started the projects nationwide in Nigeria on the 1st June 2021. So far we are half-way through having reached 249 schools out of the estimated 500 schools planned to be reached. The outreaches have been started in 33 State and Zonal Chapters of Ask The Paediatricians Foundation in Nigeria while 10 States and Ghana will be doing their own outreaches over the next few weeks. The awareness campaigns were well-received in all the schools visited so far with the schools - staff and students and pupils expressing their deep-felt appreciation to the Foundation for the laudable initiative. The few States yet to start are the States in Nigeria currently facing lot of security crises with high rate of kidnapping and civil unrest e.g. Kaduna, Niger and Imo States. A few other States have their schools currently on break and we cannot wait for them to resume to reach them with the health education and supportive materials.

In addition to the health education; we have donated so far 747 packs of disposable facemasks each pack containing 50 masks; 500 packs of 500ml of 2Sure Hand sanitizers; 1992 Covid19 posters and lot of liquid hand wash soap in the 249 schools visited. Some states also donated to their local schools soap, toilet-rolls, and face-shield/visors in addition. The project has cost about N5Million naira so far not putting to cash value some donations of facemasks we received. We are grateful to you our donors and especially to GlobalGiving for their support with $5000 Covid19 Emergency Fund.

Though Covid19 rates in Africa and Nigeria has been low; there is still a high rate of ignorance about the reality of this deadly pandemic. Reaching the students with the health information and prevention information we believe will serve dual purpose: the students are protected in the school environment against Covid19 and they will also serve as courier of the right information to their families at home. We are so glad to be able to reach thousands of children and teachers via these ongoing campaign outreaches. We are looking forward to rounding off the project by July 2021 after which we can provide you with the final data. We are also planning a post-campaign impact survey in August/September to see how successful the prooject has been in terms of compliance with Covid19 National guidelines.

We have attached some photos of the Outreaches in the various States and Zonal Chapters. The full pictures are currently available on our Facebook group Albums and social media handles - Ask The Paediatricians Foundation Facebook Page, Instagram and Twitter handles.We will be uploading to our website gallery as soon as we have completed the project. We are grateful to you for your support and hope you will continue to support us to make more meaningful impact in Nigeria and Ghana. We are so excited to welcome ATP Ghana to the family and looking forward to their very first outreach campaign later in June 2021.

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Feb 22, 2021
ATP SUPPORTS SCHOOLS AGAINST COVID19

By Dr Gbemisola Boyede | CEO

Ask The Paediatricians Foundation warmly welcomes you all to the new year 2021! Happy New Year to you our wonderful partners. We are optimistic for a better year in the midst of the ongoing Covid19 pandemic which has been rocking our world since 2020. At the end of 2020, we released our 2020 ATP annual magazine which detailed all that we were able to accomplish despite the pandemic. The link to the magazine which is available on our website has been attached to this report. We will appreciate if you can find time read and see how much impact your support has made. As our usual practice for the past 4 years, Ask The Paediatricians Foundation collaborated with Community of Sant'Egidio for the Annual 2020 Christmas Lunch for the children at Makoko. This was modified as there was no group gathering or party in view of the ongoing pandemic but the food and drinks were shared to the children in the community while maintaining all the Covid19 protocols of wearing facemasks and maintaining social distancing. We are happy to be part of putting smiles on the faces of these children despite the pandemic.

As we started the new year; Ask The Paediatricians Foundation has continued with our our online programme support for parents after a short Christmas annual break which ended on the 11th January 2021. We have since resumed our virtual support online via our Facebook groups and the private chats and video consultations on our highly subsidized ATP clinics. We are currently running the ATPParents series on our Instagram channel where we continue to share essential health information on via posters and videos made in different languages our audience can relate with.Our Facebook group has continued to grow tremendously and we just passed the 660,000 membership strength. We have a weekly livestream video programme called ATP LIVE on all our social media handles where one of our Paediatricians take live questions and answers sessions with parents. ATP continues to celebrate the Health days and we have weekly webinar on topical health issues on our Facebook group in addition to answering more than 1000 questions weekly posted directly to the group. Our Facebook group has been busier and engagement remains high. Our ATP mobile app has also been updated for easier and more friendly user experience.

As regards our offline events, these remain suspended in view of the ongoing Covid19 pandemic and the current second wave in Nigeria which have limited our physical outreaches and gatherings. Many schools have now resumed in most states in Nigeria after the Christmas holidays. Though the Nigerian Centre for Disease Control and Prevention have released guidelines for schools, it is not clear if the schools are complying with these or have resources to do so. As an organization that is committed to the wellbeing of children; we recently completed a survery to see how the schools are faring and how we can support the schools in keeping our children safe from Covid19 infection while they are learning in schools.

An initial analysis of the 277 completed questionnaires from schools heads in Nigeria and Ghana showed that while 99% of the schools are aware of the Covid19 pandemic; just over half (55%) have had any official awareness training of the school community members about Covid19 and how to keep safe at school. We found that even less than half (44%) have awareness posters in their schools - classrooms and communal areas to remind the school population of the Covid19 protocols. One-fifth of the schools surveyed have needed to shut down their schools as a result of Covid19 infection in the schools though only 1% of schools have had instances of members of the school community having confirmed Covid19 infection.

Majority of the schools (87%) will appreciate ATP coming to run an awareness training programme for the school community. Unfortunately; less than a quarter of the schools surveyed have facilities for internet and online awareness training. When asked what support the schools need to improve their compliance with Covid19 protocols; 80% will appreciate donation of handsanitizers for hand hygiene; 76% will like to have thermometers so as to monitor temperature of the students; 61% would like to have provision of handwashing basins for hand-washing at schools; 59% of schools would like to have face-masks available in the schools and more than 50% would like to have information posters that can be displayed in the schools as reminder of the prevention protocols.

Having completed our survey; we can see there is a gap in the schools being able to comply with the national guidelines for prevention of Covid19 pandemics and keeping the children safe at schools. We have decided to bridge this gap and have taken this up as our next project. The aim is to support our schools in prevention of Covid19 infection transmission. We believe the schools are important for children to learn but at the same time; the children should be able to learn safely without getting infected.

We are lauching this campaign between March and June 2020. We aim to reach at least 500 schools in the first campaign throughout all the states of Nigeria and some schools in Ghana via our State Chapters. We are grateful to GlobalGiving kickstarting this by a donation of $5000 from the Covid19 Emergency Relief Fund. We estimate that this project and other programme will cost us $100,000 in 2021. We look forward to your support always as our esteemed partners in keeping our schools and children safe from Covid19. We will strive to update you with our progress in supporting the schools. We thank you in advance for your support and request that you can kindly reach us via our email at askthepaediatricians@gmail.com for any other enquiries on how you can be part of this project. Thank you for your support always.

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